Beauty: The Path to Transcendence By: Luke Arredondo Notre Dame Seminary New Orleans, LA Submitted for the Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project Essay Contest 15 September 2014 Abstract Luke Arredondo, “Beauty: The Path to Transcendence.” Notre Dame Seminary, New Orleans, LA. The transcendental trinity, the good, the true, and the beautiful, suffered a major blow in the modern and postmodern world. This essay examines the lone survivor, beauty, and the role it plays in leading man to transcendence and, ultimately, to God. The first section looks at Plato’s Hippias Major, and the assertion that beauty has a unique relationship to sight and sound. The second section develops this idea, through the lens of Dietrich von Hildebrand’s Beauty in the Light of the Redemption. In particular, one sees that the senses of sight and sound have been given a special role which allows them to immediately and intuitively encounter the source of beauty through the senses, in nature and art. Following this section is a description of the challenges the modern world faces with its abundance of audio and visual stimulus. The suggestion is that a new way to beauty is needed, one which speaks even more powerfully than the senses can. This new avenue to beauty is the mystery of human love. Here, two key ideas are explored from Hildebrand and also the work of Fulton J. Sheen. First, the essay discusses how natural, human love is transfigured to a higher plane by Christian marriage, and the way in which eros leads to agape. Second, the principle of superabundance is treated, in light of marital love. The result is a synthesis between Hildebrand’s vision of beauty and his vision of love and the conclusion that this mystery of human love is a powerful encounter with beauty that can lead mankind to the transcendent God. Arredondo 1 Philosophical theology has long lauded a development of appreciation for the true and the good as a means to rationally approach the existence of God.1 Yet, since the Enlightenment, the West has largely cast off both of these concepts. When truth and goodness are seen as malleable ideas, it seems very unlikely that even an open-minded, curious, and introspective person would somehow trace the connection to God as Christians conceive Him: fixed, immutable, the source of stability in truth and goodness. When this road is, for most people, closed, or at least damaged and difficult to navigate, where is the path to God to be found? In the bygone age of Greek civilization, and well up through modernity, there existed a trinity of sorts, that helped bring a transcendent realm down to man, and helped bring man out of his limited material existence to strive for something greater: the good, the true, and the beautiful.2 But as the Enlightenment and post-enlightenment philosophical schools cast doubt on our ability to know, and particularly our ability to know anything as good in itself or true in itself, two members of this trinity were lost. But beauty remains. Beauty, especially in the arts and in the mystery of human love, has the power to break open a materialist view of the world and speak immediately and intuitively to the heart, and reveal the transcendent God.3 Plato and Beauty In the Greater Hippias, Socrates and Hippias are searching for a definition of beauty as such. Though they are both able to name a wide host of beautiful things, from pots to horses to women and even the gods, they have trouble defining the essence of beauty, or what it is that 1 See Vatican I, Dei Filius, Ch. 2 in The Christian Faith in the Doctrinal Documents of the Catholic Church, ed. Jacues dupuis, S.J. (New York: Alba House, 2001), 42. 2 Alice M. Ramos, Dynamic Transcendentals: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty from a Thomistic Perspective (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 86. 3 Pontifical Council for Culture, The Via Pulchritudinis: Privileged Pathway for Evangelisation and Dialogue, 2006, II.2, §2: Beauty, as much as truth and good, leads us to God, the first truth, supreme good, and beauty itself. But beauty means more than the truth or the good. To say that something is beautiful is not only to recognise it intelligible and therefore loveable, but also, in specifying our knowledge, it attracts us, or captures us with a ray capable of igniting marvel. Arredondo 2 makes all things, from pots to gods, capable of being called “beautiful.” Throughout their conversation however, Socrates and Hippias eventually begin to entertain that beauty has a unique relationship to hearing and sight. This part of the conversation, especially given our contemporary context, is important: Socrates: …If whatever makes us be glad, not with all the pleasures, but just through hearing and sight—if we call that fine, how do you suppose we’d do in the contest? Men, when they’re fine anyway-and everything decorative, pictures and sculptures— these all delight us when we see them, if they’re fine. Fine sounds and music altogether, and speeches and storytelling have the same effect. So if we answered that tough man “Your honor, the fine is what is pleasant through hearing and sight,” don’t you think we’d curb his toughness? Hippias: This time, Socrates, I think what the fine is has been well said.4 This perspective, that there is something unique about the encounter of beauty that happens through visual and auditory experiences, is, in one sense almost prophetic: could Socrates have known how deeply involved humanity would become with visual and audio media? In another sense, however, it seems fair to say that he was just making an observation common to all mankind: the arts, especially as encountered through sight and sound, move us in a powerful way. This phenomenon has not changed since Socrates day, but its importance is now being realized with more clarity. 4 Plato, Hippias Major, 298 a. Arredondo 3 Hildebrand’s Beauty of Form Dietrich von Hildebrand shares Plato’s high estimation of the unique quality of what he calls “beauty of form” that is not found only in fine works of art, but “which radiates from visible and audible things… It is the beauty of the visible and the audible with which we have contact in nature and in art.”5 Hildebrand overcomes some of the deficiencies of Socrates and Hippias’ understanding of the relationship between the beautiful and the senses, as well as between the beautiful and art. Perhaps the most helpful distinction he makes is between beauty as experienced through the body, and beauty as an encounter with something spiritual. This is of fundamental concern for seeing beauty as the way to transcendence. Thus, he notes that the “pleasure and the displeasure of my eyes are experienced in connection with my body; it is a sense experience. The beauty of the Palazzo Farnese, however, certainly has nothing to do with my body, and its comprehension is separated by a world from sense perception.”6 Hildebrand is especially helpful is his understanding of the link between beauty and the spiritual realm. For him, any encounter with beauty immediately and intuitively speaks to the heart, and presents, through a visual or audible experience, a “sublime incorporeality, and about which it is impossible to say that it is directed to the lower part of our soul.”7 Beauty does not, therefore serve as merely a symbol or signpost for something beyond itself, and analogies or intellectual links from created beauty to the divine order are not required; the experience is organic, and innate.8 It is this phenomenon that Hildebrand merely presents as a given, but which is also remarkable in its brilliance. He sees that God has, in a mysterious way, enabled our 5 Dietrich von Hildebrand, “Beauty in the Light of the Redemption,” Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 4 no. 2 (2001): 80. 6 Ibid., 85 7 Ibid., 86 8 Ibid. Arredondo 4 sense of sight and sound to carry with it a perception of His very grandeur. And though of course this phenomenon does not rest in the actual objects themselves, nor in our senses, it is nonetheless inescapably true that at work here is the principle of superabundance. Through the mere encounter with sights and sounds, the human heart is able to realize the great depths of beauty, and indeed the very source of beauty, which is God. As Hildebrand puts it: “…the beauty of the dome of Florence or of St. Peter’s, the beauty of the first chorale in St. Matthew’s Passion, or of Mozart’s Figaro—all these are, to be sure, immediately attached to audible and visible things; they are not connected with beauty of form merely by thoughts; they are not ideas that these express thereby, but in their quality they speak about another, higher reality—they make God known.”9 Of course, Hildebrand is not alone in this connection. Christoph Cardinal Schonborn, for instance, discusses this idea as well. He focuses in particular on the way Mozart composed pieces of music, out of both duty and sheer creativity. This, he argues, gives us a better understanding of the creative profusion of God which is creation. He is clear that beauty is not only functional, but also exists for its own sake. What is the reason for this situation? Schonborn suggests that “this ‘purposeless’ superabundance of beauty reveals more clearly what criticism of evolutionism as a materialistic view of the world entails. Perhaps music too…can help us to look beyond the too restrictive horizons of materialism and thus open us to the melody of the Creator.”10 Thus, beauty is a way of drawing us to God. Yet, in spite of the ubiquitous 9 Ibid., 88 Christoph Cardinal Schonborn, Chance or Purpose, ed. Hubert Philip Weber, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007), 67. 10 Arredondo 5 opportunity to encounter beauty in nature and in art, our contemporary world is facing increasing difficulties on the road to beauty. New Challenges I contend that this encounter of beauty, which immediately speaks to the heart of transcendence and transfigures mere material realties into an instrument that speaks of the spiritual realm is still true. But it is endangered. Paradoxically, the improved technology which makes excellent audio-visual experience so readily accessible also, by its dominating presence, can overwhelm our senses and, thus, stunt our growth, and limit our capacity to appreciate beauty. Hildebrand acknowledges the problem, evident some time ago, that many are too busy to truly notice the beauty about them. He nevertheless insisted, rightly so, that beauty must be valued, and that it is of fundamental importance not only for the individual, but for society, as beauty impacts moral values.11 The impact on society, through morality, happens as men and women become open to the transcendent, and look beyond themselves to settle life’s grand questions. Even a brief encounter with a beautiful work of art can lead to a deep change in the heart of manknd. Thus, Hildebrand wants beauty not to fade, because when it does, a powerful opportunity for conversion slips away with it. I do not deny that beauty has the transfiguring power that Hildebrand ascribes to it, but it seems that in a world so saturated with high quality video and audio production, a new movement of beauty and art, and a return to sacred art, will be necessary to re-awaken the thirst for transcendence that resides in every human heart.12 Pope Francis has remarked, along this line, that the Church should “encourage the use of the arts in evangelization, building on the 11 Cf. Dietrich Von Hildebrand, “The Place of Beauty in Human Existence,” available at http://www.hildebrandlegacy.org/main.cfm?id=130&r1=0.47&r2=0&r3=0&r4=0&eid=233. 12 Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1994) no. 2502-2503 Arredondo 6 treasures of the past but also drawing upon the wide variety of contemporary expressions so as to transmit the faith in a new “language of parables”. We must… discover new signs and new symbols…. and different forms of beauty… including those unconventional modes of beauty which may mean little to the evangelizers, yet prove particularly attractive for others.”13 Much work needs to be done in the areas of education and catechesis to prepare and open the mind and hearts of young people to this profound experience of beauty. I would like to suggest, therefore, another critical way in which to approach beauty. A New Avenue of Beauty: The Mystery of Human Love Hildebrand’s own writing on marriage and sexuality, some of his most poignant work, speaks very highly of the fundamental necessity of understanding the deep meaning of marriage and of conjugal love. I would like to suggest that his writings on beauty share a theme with his writings on human love, and thus one can make the case that human love presents a new avenue of beauty. To approach the mystery of human love as an encounter with beauty, two key concepts must be laid out. First, Hildebrand’s assertion that Christian marriage takes the very best features of natural marriages (i.e. marriage between unbelievers) and “transfigures” them merits some discussion. In a Christian marriage, self-sacrificial love, fidelity, the desire for unity, the good of the other, etc. all become ordered not merely toward another person, but another person who is understood to be an image of God. Additionally, marriage, in the life of a believer is not merely something good and holy, but something sanctifying.14 The noblest aspirations of the human 13 Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, Vatican Web site, November 24, 2014, http://www.vatican.va/evangeliigaudium/en/, #167. 14 Dietrich Von Hildebrand, Marriage: The Mystery of Faithful Love (Sophia Institute Press, 1991), 53: He made of this sacred bond a specific source of grace. He transformed marriage--already sacred in itself--into something sanctifying.” Emphasis in original. Arredondo 7 spirit which arise in the love of man and woman in the natural plane, ultimately have a supernatural destination. That is, they are a springboard to a more exalted love. Nascent in human love is a spark of divinity, a taste of the divine. Here, in the heart of man and wife, the beauty of their love becomes sacramental, pointing to something higher. Second, we must consider the principle of superabundance, an idea which Hildebrand uses in his discussion of marriage as well as in his discussions of beauty.15 This idea helps to offer a description of the way in which God utilizes fundamental human experiences (art, nature, love) and is able to give them a profound meaning, one which surpasses anything we might expect from them. In love, the superabundance lies not only in the relationship between spouses, but reaches an unexpected summit in the love of a child, who arises, body and soul, from the love of spouses, by the generous, abundant gift of God. Love which dies to self and seeks out the good of the other, experiences a “resurrection” of sorts in the birth of new life. What could be more superabundant? Taken together, these two ideas set us on the right track to see the love of man and wife as a part of the way of beauty. In this realm, too, we must not confuse pleasure with beauty. In all human love, and especially in marriage, there are difficulties. Hildebrand notes, for instance, that the indissolubility of marriage presents a great risk, but therein lies its beauty, because everything great, everything noble on earth, is connected with risk. It is, however, undeniable that the human experience of love is perhaps even more intuitive a link to beauty than even the beauty in art or nature. Married love gives us a privileged expression of and encounter with beauty. 15 Dietrich Von Hildebrand, The Encyclical Humanae Vitae: A Sign of Contradiction in Why Humanae Vitae Was Right: A Reader, ed. Janet Smith (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 70. See also, Beauty in the Light of Redemption, 82, 86. Arredondo 8 Fulton Sheen and the Mystery of Love Along these lines, we must add another voice to the conversation. Written in the 1950s, Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s Three to Get Married highlights, and enhances, the two themes of Hildebrand. Concerning the idea of human love transfigured into the divine, Sheen writes these powerful words: The Eros is the vestibule to Agape. Purely human love is the embryo of the love of the Divine. One finds some suggestion of this in Plato, who argues that love is the first step toward religion. He pictures love for beautiful persons being transformed into love for beautiful souls, then into a love of justice, goodness, and God, who is their source…Love for other hearts is intended to lead to the love of the Divine Heart.16 This vision of human relationships, and how they point the way to our ultimate happiness, is comparable to the role of beauty encountered in nature and art. In fact, one might indeed say that the beauty of human love is both a natural encounter and a work of art. In the same way that the visible or audible works of beauty point toward beauty itself, so too human love, encountered in its most fundamental and authentic desires, points us toward beauty qua beauty. Archbishop Sheen also argues that, in contemplating the mystery of love, we can see the ultimate solution to many of the contemporary world’s biggest tensions: God vs. man, man vs. woman, and body vs. soul.17 All of these tensions, in his estimation, are solved by a proper understanding and valuation of love. Regarding the principle of superabundance, Sheen’s discussion of the role of children in marriage is paramount. Because human love, no matter how noble, always frustrates, he sees the solution: it takes three to love. Love, which we often glimpse in another person, must 16 17 Fulton J. Sheen, Three to Get Married (New York: Scepter Publishers, 2008), 31. Emphasis in original. Ibid., 27-39. Arredondo 9 be found to reside somewhere beyond. Because if we set our heart on the love as found in another person, it will fail us. Thus, he argues that “The self actually is always craving for this divine Love. Its insatiable urges toward happiness, its anticipated ecstasy of pleasures, its constant desire to love without satiety…all these constitute the mating call of God to the soul.”18 When this happens, when love is emptied of egotism, then it will be returned. Sheen sees the telos of human love as resting in God, who alone is then able to return the love in a way beyond all expectation: by generating new life! “Love is at first dual, then triune. Duality, or two in love, is the consolation that God has provided for our finitude. ‘It is not well that man should be without companionship’ (Gen. 2:18). But perfect love is triune, either in the sense that it appeals to “our love” as something outside both coming from God, or as the “fruit of our love,” which is the child, whose spirit or soul has come from God.”19 In the works of both Hildebrand and Sheen, the way of beauty is encountered in a way that exceeds even the most sublime encounters with nature or art through the senses. If God has allowed the senses of sight and sound a special gift of pointing to the source of all that is beautiful, he has ennobled the mystery of human love with an even greater gift. I think that, in a world which not only has cast off truth and goodness, but even seems to have forgotten the gift of beauty in its arts, this new vista of human love as part of the via pulchritudinis must not be overlooked. Certainly St. John Paul II gave ample attention to the love of man and woman in his Theology of the Body, and there has been a profusion of writings to continue his work. This area, I contend, is one which is still ripe for evangelization and which can perhaps serve as a part 18 19 Ibid., 44. Ibid., 66. Arredondo 10 of the renewal of beauty. Human love, ever ancient and ever new, if seen in this light, can perhaps form part of the “new language of parables” mentioned above. Conclusion Beauty is a key to transcendence, and in the postmodern world, it plays an even greater role than it has in any other epoch. There is no denying that the visual and audio media, which is almost omnipresent in our contemporary world, have a powerful impact on the human heart. Plato and Hildebrand both correctly identify the strong way in which our senses of sight and hearing can speak more powerfully and intuitively of the beautiful than the finest rhetoric or analogy can. Yet, the profusion of audio and video media today gives us a new challenge. The challenge of finding new ways to see the connection between art and beauty, and beauty and transcendence, gives us also new opportunities. A deep appreciation of the mystery of human love, an idea perhaps not yet totally obscured in the West, offers a new vista of beauty. In the love of husband and wife, in particular, one sees the merely human realities transfigured to a new key, and the principle of superabundance also at work. Both are indispensable to recovering transcendence, and both show forth the power of beauty. Arredondo 11