Great Ideas
- Introduction
- The Ideas of God and Man
- The Ideas of Truth and Lies
- The Ideas of Good and Evil
- The Ideas of Beauty and Ethics
The Study of the Great Ideas in the Great Books
Introduction
Suppose you wish to attend university and may gain admission to the institution of your choice. As you browse through the various catalogues, you note that one (Classical College) has a faculty composed of the following...
Herodotus and Thucydides teach the history of Greece; Edward Gibbon lectures on the fall of Rome. Plato offers a course on metaphysics, while Francis Bacon and John Stuart Mill discuss the logic of science. Aristotle and Kant lead a panel discussion concerning moral problems, and Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Locke talk about politics. Euclid, Descartes, and Russell teach mathematics. The Apostle Paul. Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Luther are instructors in theology. Economics professors include Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Maynard Keynes. Special guest lecturers include Leonardo Da Vinci on art and Handel on music. Sorry, this school has no hockey team or cheerleading squad.
Do you sign up immediately for the fall semester or set your sights on a diploma at Bohunk University?
Unfortunately there is no Classical College today; at least not one that is blessed with as many minds as that of the aforementioned school. However, the ideas of each of these people and many more is available to those who would make the effort. Their works are part of what has come to be called in western culture, the Great Conversation (discussion of the great ideas). You may asking, "What are these great ideas? Where can a serious discussion of them be found? With whom do we have this great conversation? Why are these ideas so great - so essential anyway?"
Moderns have spent the better part of the last century crowing about the triumph of science and technology. They have erroneously concluded that, because we have shown ourselves so far advanced in these areas, we must also be superior in other academic fields as well. After all we run faster and jump higher, therefore we must think straighter.
Modernity, however, has left us hollow. While clinging to the so-called triumph of humanity, they have starved their very souls. As the 21st century dawns, the record left by man over the last one hundred years has shown us to be essentially the same as the barbarians of old. Major wars, environmental meltdown, abortion, euthanasia, gender confusion, spiritual liberalism have brought modernity to a grinding halt.
For the most part we are now living in a postmodern culture. Relativism reigns supreme. The western world has degenerated from a position of faith in the supreme sovereignty of God, to belief in the superiority of Man, and, finally, to a time when absolutes, especially on moral issues, are thrown out entirely. We no longer believe in anything except this...Truth is relative. How’s that for a contradiction?
Postmodernism full blown promises a very bleak future. The time is ripe for a return to a sanctified discussion of the great ideas. The foundations of our culture are collapsing. Our education system, spearheaded by the multiversities, fails to impart much objective truth (forget wisdom). The church chases after the harlot of entertainment with a message devoid of the Gospel. The state plays the role of Jack Horner, sticking its thumb into every pie in the land. The family dysfunctions. Medical care fragments. The answer? Pursuit of Truth - truth that cannot be dismissed as relative - truth that is objective and foundational. This is the stuff of which the Great Ideas, found in the Great Books, consist.
Solidly grounded in the Word of God and eager to honestly pursue the truth, students can learn much from reading these authors. They have much to say to us. Truth, wisdom, understanding know not time nor place. Apart from the Lord Jesus Christ no one has ever had a perfect grasp on these concepts. However, the many great men and women who have participated in the Great Conversation through the centuries have all had something to say that has become an integral part of forming Western thought and culture.
Dialogue has been at the heart of this process, each author critiquing and adding to what has come before him or her. These writings have linked us from the Greeks to modern day. This stream of discussion is why some of what Homer wrote in the Iliad, for example, should still be relevant to us today.
Maybe now you are bit more clear on why we need to return to a study of the Great Books. However, you still want to know what these books are; who are the authors; and what they are discussing.
Most lists of the Great Books can be very intimidating. We wonder how we can ever read all those volumes, especially when most are so difficult to understand. We also face the problem of having to do this chronologically, starting with Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Virgil and trying to slog our way through all the "isms" of the centuries to get to where we are today. We decide to stick with the latest craze of "twinkie" novels or wait until Hollywood feeds us the next revisionist version of a classic.
In thinking about this problem, several factors must be considered. Most high school students are not ready to study many of the great books. Simply put, they need some instruction on how to read beyond an elementary level. Secondly the Great Conversation is a lifetime endeavour. In fact we will never have it all figured out. It therefore seems almost an impossible task. Most young people choose not to start. However, the answer is to do just that - START. The hope is that in starting the appetite will be whetted for more. Next, not all of the ideas in all of the Great Books are suitable for consumption by a young mind. The ideas discussed and the material read must be appropriate if wholesome growth is to take place. Finally, and to a lesser degree, until the mind can grow into certain concepts, some of the Great Books are just plain boring. This is not the fault of the book; it is, to stay with the food analogy, meat. Young minds need to cut all their teeth first before they can do justice to a good steak.
Before a satisfactory course of study can be explained, a closer look at how it was arrived at is necessary. Several decades ago Mortimer Adler, with the help of a large cast of professionals, spearheaded a project to name and categorize the great ideas of history. Together they analyzed over 400 works by over 70 authors from Homer to the 20th century. By studying references in these works by one author to another and/or the discussion of an idea by that author, they identified 102 ideas divided into over 3000 topics that they deemed to be foundational to our culture. Based on their research, they concluded that these could safely be called the Great Ideas.
To list them all here would be awkward and to deal with them all in a high school curriculum would be mean reading all of the Great Books - translation? - impossible. It would lead no doubt to an all too common modern malady - understanding that was "a mile wide and an inch deep". Thomas Hobbes put it another way. "If I read as many books as most men do, I would be as dull-witted as they are." However, in order to give you a flavour for the types of things Adler discovered, he mentions such ideas as art, beauty, courage, democracy, desire, education, eternity, God, matter, mind, philosophy, poetry, reasoning, religion,. science, sin, state, truth, virtue, wealth, and wisdom among his 102. Any reasonable person would find little cause to quibble with his findings.
As stated previously, the thing that makes all of Adler’s 102 ideas great is their basic or fundamental character. They all have bearing on who we are, where we came from, and where we are going.
David Crabtree, president of Gutenberg College, puts it this way, "Wise living means to live as one ought; in other words, to strive to achieve good goals by moral means. This statement immediately evokes an array of fundamental questions: Why are we here? What is valuable or worthwhile? What are the principles of right and wrong? Is there a God? Who is he? What is my relationship to Him? Without having seriously wrestled with these issues, one will be condemned to a life without direction or purpose..."
A Great Books study should do this. It is not merely the gathering of information. It is that to be sure; but it is so much more. Therefore, to truly help a young student to explore great literature and inculcate ideas that are both beneficial and a catalyst to his growth, it is necessary to narrow the list of 102 Great Ideas to something more manageable - a starter kit of ideas if you will.
Which of these will best serve the needs of a young disciple? Which will best serve to synthesize a Christ-centered worldview? Which will most help the student prepare for a life beyond his secondary studies, whether that life include post-secondary education, the work force, or family life? Adler himself helps to emphasize the importance of the study of these ideas.
"...in the consideration of each idea, we are led to the consideration of other ideas. How does our understanding of truth affect our understanding of goodness and beauty? How does our understanding of what is good and bad carry us not only to an understanding of what is right and wrong, but also to an understanding of justice, and how does that affect our understanding of liberty and equality as well?"
Anne Perez adds that when choosing any idea or book to study we should consider its relevance to contemporary life (no matter when it was written); it should have made some strong impression or change in civilization; and it should consider the complexity of the human spirit.
This Great Books study will be unique in that it will take a thematic rather than chronological approach. Every consideration has been made to choose what might arguably be the greatest of the Great Ideas. The books (both fiction and non-fiction), the short stories, and the poetry have all been selected to help the student explore these topics. Some may be found to be more relevant than others. The choices of literature for this course are not carved in stone. In time we hope to add studies in art and music for they are also powerful ways for expressing Great Ideas.
The ideas have been divided into four categories: each idea or groups of related ideas are studies in one academic year. The plan is as follows:
- Year One: The Idea of God and Man
- Year Two: The Idea of Truth and Error
- Year Three: The Idea of Good and Evil
- Year Four: The Idea of Beauty and Ethics
Why these ideas? First of all it is in God that we live and move and have our being. Everything begins and ends with him. To deny God is to deny our entire existence. Therefore, we must first and foremost come to an understanding of what we believe about God. Ultimately this will shape and determine how we perceive Truth. Truth gives us a basis for determining Good and Evil. Together they shape our understanding of what is Beautiful and how to live Ethically.
Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, singly and together, have been seen by many as the heart of the age old controversy concerning such topics as the absolute and the relative; the objective and the subjective; the universal and the individual. In a postmodern culture a right understanding of these three ideas is foundational to living Godly lives in this present age. It is hoped that the student’s life will be enriched by these studies and he will be better equipped to be a biblical agent of change in our culture.
The Study of the Ideas of God and Man
- Does God exist?
- If so, who is He?
- If He can be known, how can I know Him?
- What does He require of me?
To affirm or deny the existence of God carries with it more consequences for thought and action than any other question one can ask. Because of the extreme importance of this topic, no Great Books study would be complete without an exploration of it
As you work through the material in this course, you will consider the views of a variety of authors who lived in a variety of cultures at different times in history. Your conclusion to the primary question of God’s existence as well as issues that naturally follow: the question of divine nature and the relation of the world/man to the gods/God will profoundly influence your conception of the world in which you live, the position you occupy in it, and the life to which you are called.
Whether you and others consider man to be the supreme being of the universe, equal to all other "things" on the earth, or subservient to a superior being, will surely shape your worldview. For example, if God does exist, you need to conclude whether He is to be feared or loved. Is He to be defied or obeyed? Is He merely a concept in your mind or is He personal?
Whether you exclude or embrace a divine being will practically influence your view of man and the world around you. While we have not specifically focused on the idea of man in this course, it follows naturally that what you learn and come to believe about the questions that surround a study of God, will shape your understanding and actions related to man and the world. Keep this in mind as you study this year. Simply put the more we know of God, the more we know of ourselves and our responsibility in life and eternity.
In a very real sense a study of the idea of God could begin and end with the Bible. Without a doubt it has been the most influential book ever written. Whether you believe it is the inspired, infallible Word of God or merely a good example of early literature, you cannot deny that the ideas contained in the Bible, more than any other book, have shaped the way western culture has developed.
In the Bible we see essentially all the ideas about God or the gods that man could ever conceive. In some way or another God has illustrated the consequences of embracing paganism, heathenism, Gnosticism, and other isms. He has also shown the great comfort from following in The Way.
Over the years great men and women have rewritten on the enduring themes that are laid out for us in Scripture. In no way does this course make the assertion that any of the Great Books are part of the Canon. However, what these people have to say can and should help us understand the Truth, Goodness, and Beauty that accompanies a right understanding of who God is, how we can know Him, and what He requires of us.
To establish the boundaries for our discussion, we will start with a basic assumption: God either exists or He doesn’t. On one side you have someone like John Calvin who, in his famous Institutes of the Christian Religion, said,
"That there exists in the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, some sense of Deity, we hold to be beyond dispute, since God Himself, to prevent any man from pretending ignorance, has endued +all men with some idea of His Godhead...that all men...may be condemned by their own conscience when they neither worship him nor consecrate their lives to his service..."
On the other side of the coin you have someone like Nietzsche who said, "God is dead...or, if he exists...he seems incapable of making himself understood."
Between these two divergent positions we have everything from "soup to nuts". The Greeks and Romans were polytheistic in their practice of religion. It has been said that together they worshipped over 36,000 deities of one form or another. Some of these gods they even saw as personal in nature. Many saw the gods as glorified super heroes. In Edith Hamilton’s Mythology the pagan gods of the Greeks, Romans, and Norse are seen for all their fickleness. They had a beginning, change character like New England weather, and, other than their immortality and great powers, were little different from the man in the street. For more extensive evidence of this the student will want to read Homer and Virgil, among others.
The ideas of deism and pantheism also find expression throughout the ages. While deism affirms that there is a god, it often sees him as some sort of absentee landlord, neither becoming involved nor caring much about what happens in the world. God does not govern, therefore he neither rewards or punishes. In turn he does not have to be feared nor served. Later deists saw God as having laid down certain laws to govern all men yet this is not done through the interference of religion. Men like Rousseau and many others who championed many ideas of the Enlightenment saw God in this light. Pantheists, on the other hand, were closer to atheists. They denied the existence of a transcendent, supernatural being or beings and saw God everywhere. In short God is Nature. A lot of poetry that we read contains this romantic view of God as being in the trees, flowers, clouds, etc.
While the deist rejects supernatural revelation, faith, and religion as being the work of reason, the agnostic makes the opposite denial. Nothing supernatural can be known by reason. It can neither be proved or disproved. The Gnostic stands against the agnostic and claims that reason can penetrate the divine mysteries. Of course there also exists people who have taken a stand on all points in between, attempting to harmonize faith and reason in pursuit of the knowledge of God.
The point of this whirlwind tour of some of the main views of the idea of God is to simply say that you will come into contact with them in your reading. It cannot be avoided. No attempt has been made to assign a Great Book for each school of thought concerning God. Instead the books were chosen to provide you with a broad view of how western culture came to understand who God is and what difference that makes. Some of the novels, short stories, and poems might better be classified as being about man, but, as was previously mentioned, no study of God can escape application to what this means to man. It is hoped that all of the selections will bring enjoyment to the reader.
However, it is ultimately hoped that by completing the requirements that follow, you will have a more comprehensive understanding of what God isn’t, and, more importantly, that you will better know who He is; not just know about God, but know God as He has revealed Himself to us in His Word. May God direct and bless your studies.
Materials Studied in Level One
- How to Read a Book (Portions) (Adler)
- Mythology (Hamilton)
- The Bible (Portions)
- The Last Days of Socrates (Plato)
- Calvin's Institutes (Book One)
- Confessions (Augustine)
- City of God (Portions) (Augustine)
- Animal Farm (Orwell)
- Frankenstein (Shelley)
- Call of the Wild (London)
- Dr Jekyl & Mr Hyde (Stevenson)
- The Yearling (Rawlings)
- Forbidden City (Bell)
- Robinson Crusoe (Defoe)
- Julius Caesar (Shakespeare)
- The Triumph of Truth (d'Aubigne)
- Streams of Civilization Vol I
- Various Short Stories
- Various Poems
The Study of the Ideas of Truth and Lies
Picture the scene. Freshman university students are sitting packed into a room that is obviously too small to hold the entire class. The eminent Dr. Phil O’Sophy enters and sizes up the audience. "Some of them will have to go," he muses. Without a word of introduction he turns to the blackboard and scrawls, CAN ANYTHING BE KNOWN?. He announces to the class, "I want 500 words in answer to this question by Wednesday." He walks out of the room. The students look at one another in stunned silence. Professor O’Sophy will get his wish. Half the class fails to show on Wednesday.
This fictionalized account is repeated in classroom after classroom in many of our major universities every fall. But it’s not the old ploy of knocking down class size with which we are concerned here; it’s the question.
- Can anything be known?
- Is there such a thing as truth?
- If so, what is it?
- How do I get it?
- What do I do with it if it is obtained?
The pursuit of truth is as old as man himself. Before God even creates Adam, we read, "In the beginning God…" GOD, the first person spoken of in the Bible. The very word denotes majesty; that basis for all that there is; the sustainer of all creation; or, as we read in John 14:6, the very essence of all sound knowledge. In other words God is Truth and because he is Truth, in Him can be found no Lie. Hence the inspiration for the second year of the study of the Great Ideas through the Great Books.
Because God (Truth) created man, we are stamped with His image. It comes as no surprise then that man has always sought after the Truth. What makes the pursuit of Truth so difficult is that the Fall of man, precipitated in part by the Father of Lies, Satan, has resulted in our loss of perfection. We are now a deeply flawed creation – totally depraved in fact; that is, every inclination is toward sin. This has made man’s pursuit of Truth perilous and, as is his nature, has devised a veritable obstacle course on which to run this race.
For many, to speak the truth is to merely say what we think or believe. Conversely, to lie is to say the opposite of what we think or believe. As commendable as it may be to "tell the truth" in this sense, this definition does not satisfy at least one aspect of the Ideas of Truth and Lies. For example, someone may say what they think or believe and be entirely in error because their beliefs are based on falsehoods. Therefore, a study of Truth and Lies must be more than learning to tell the truth as we know it. It must get to the heart of the age old questions: What ultimately is true? and How do we know Truth?
In the Western world this all began with Thales who sought to determine what lay beyond the diverse physical realm that was all around him; to seek what holds it all together. In other words, what is it that unites all things? This seeking after The Ultimate Reality (Truth) has been the guiding passion of philosophers down through the ages. For the Greeks this ultimate reality was a very abstract idea. They knew it was infinite and they knew that it was eternal but they did not see it for what it was. That view was left to the Hebrews who, long before the Greeks, understood that the One who held everything together was a personal Being. It is in Him that we live and move and have our being. This was a very radical thought and one that served to divide seekers of Truth to the present day.
Until the 13th century the Greek and, later, the Judeo-Christian worldviews dominated the West. Then along came Thomas Aquinas whose signature work, Summa Theologica, was an attempt at using Aristotelian thought in addition to Revelation, rendering what has come to be known as The Great Synthesis. It’s impact on the Church was staggering and, three hundred years later, at the Council of Trent, his works were placed at the altar alongside the Scriptures.
Since then philosophy has become a veritable smorgasbord of "isms". From Descartes to Locke; Hume to Kant; Kierkegaard to Nietzsche, we are left swimming in a pool of competing worldviews. All of this makes understanding the ideas of Truth and Lies quite difficult to unpack for today’s student. In fact, we live in an age where there is an attempt to force Truth to the sidelines by a culture that demands tolerance of all beliefs and relativism to reign supreme. Truth is in the eye of the beholder for many today. It is as if Truth exists on shifting sand and, by extension, a Lie cannot exist at all.
However, even young children can see through this awkward scepticism. Mark Twain, in The Prince and the Pauper, effectively illustrates this in a scene where young Edward, clothed in rags, hungry, beaten, sleeping in a cattle stall, is discovered by two peasant girls, Margery and Prissy. When asked who he is, Edward replies that he is the King of England. Prissy responds,
"Didst hear him Margery? He saith he is the king. Can that be true?"
"How can it be else but true, Prissy? Would he say a lie? For look you, Prissy, an it were not true, it would be a lie. It surely would be. Now think on’t it. For all things that be not true, be lies – thou canst make naught else out of it."
It was a good tight argument, without a leak in it anywhere, and it left Prissy’s half doubts not a leg to stand on. She considered a moment, then put the king upon his honor with the simple remark, "If thou art truly the king, then I believe thee."
Quite simply, Truth and Lies exist, and it is necessary for all who declare intellectual honesty to determine what is True and to act on what is discovered. To not do so is to live a Lie and Margery does not allow for that.
Materials Studied in Level Two
- How to Read a Book (Portions) (Adler)
- Oedipus, O. at Colonnus And Antigone (Sophocles)
- The Bible (Portions)
- The Consolation of Philosophy (Boethius)
- City of God (Portions) (Augustine)
- Calvin's Institutes (Book Two)
- Rasselas (Johnson)
- Post Modern Times (Veith)
- Out of the Silent Planet (Lewis)
- To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee)
- Silas Marner (Eliot)
- Don Quixote (Cervantes)
- Great Expectations (Dickens)
- Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare)
- Streams of Civilization Vol II
- The Importance of Being Ernest (Wilde)
- Tartuffe (Moliere)
- Various Short Sories
- Various Poems
The Study of the Ideas of Good and Evil
"I am the Alpha and Omega, The Beginning and the End, the First and the Last." Rev. 22:13
"Man is the measure of all things." Petagorus
"I am the way, the truth, and the life." John 14:6a
"You will not surely die." Satan (Gen. 3:4)
…so sums up our study over the last two years of the ideas of God, Man, Truth, and Lies. But, what about the ideas of Good and Evil? We run into these words almost every day and across many disciplines. One can hardly consider studies in theology, ethics, psychology, politics, or art (just to name a few), without wrestling with questions about the existence and manifestation of Good and Evil. To be sure, what we come to believe about Good and Evil will have a bearing on how we relate to truth and falsity; beauty and ugliness.
Mortimer Adler sates, "The true is the good of our thinking and the beautiful is a quality that certain things have when they are good as objects of contemplation, love, or as production." While we might quibble with Adler’s ideas of truth, goodness, and beauty, we should agree that we can better understand goodness and beauty in terms of truth, and truth and goodness in terms of beauty. While they can be considered separately, they are best understood in relation to one another. You will recall that one of the primary aims of the study of the Great Ideas through the Great Books is to contemplate what is True, what is Good, and what is Beautiful.
As you have probably predicted, our view of Good and Evil will be rooted in our concept of God and Man. The psalmist writes, "Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good!" (Psalm 136:1) This goodness of God expressed in this psalm is reiterated throughout Scripture. It is multi-faceted and speaks of God’s sovereign redemptive love; His kindness and generosity to all His creatures; His pity to those in distress; His patience.
On the other hand if, like Protagorus, a person sees "man as the measure of all things", Good and Evil are not rooted in the character of a Supreme Being who has created man in His own image. These ideas then become, in the words of Montaigne, "in large part the opinion we have of them". Like Shakespeare’s Hamlet we are free then to determine for ourselves what, if anything, is evil.
So the stage has been set and through the ages thinkers of all stripes have debated the existence, source, and effect of Good and Evil on our world. Some have sought the right application of Good for their own benefit; others for the Common Good of society; and the rest, the Greatest Good for the greatest number. Few have actually sought what they considered to be Evil. However, all, in one form or another, have had to decide on answer to key questions: Is there a God? If so, who is He? What is He like? What does He require of me? Does Truth exist? If so, how do I apply it to all areas of my life? They also probably wrestled with the same questions that you will tackle this year: Does Good and Evil exist? If so, what are their attributes? How do they affect my perception of the world? My actions? How am I to seek Good? What conflicts arise as I seek to do this?
"Hey, wait a minute!" you might be saying. "Haven’t I already dealt with many of these questions in the books, poems, and stories that I’ve read over the last two years?"
Congratulations! You’re quite astute if this has occurred to you at any time while you’ve been reading this introduction. (That’s the good news.) The better news is that you will, no doubt, re-visit many of the questions and ideas already studied and begin to explore their interconnectedness with this years’ ideas of Good and Evil. Welcome to the Great Conversation! Uncle Screwtape will not be happy.
Materials Studied in Level Three
- How to Read a Book (Portions) (Adler)
- The Iliad (Homer)
- Beowulf
- The Bible (Portions)
- Calvin's Institutes (Book Three)
- MacBeth (Shakespeare)
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- The Screwtape Letters (Lewis)
- The Great Divorce (Lewis)
- An Ideal Husband (Wilde)
- Ivanhoe (Scott)
- Hamlet (Shakespeare)
- Wuthering Heights (Bronte)
- Lord of the Flies (Golding)
- Moby Dick (Melville)
- The Universe Next Door (Sire)
- Various Short Stories
- Various Poems
The Study of the Ideas of Beauty and Ethics
"All good things must come to an end." …or so the saying goes. In the sense that we have arrived at the fourth and final level of our study of the Great Ideas through the Great Books, and, assuming that you can truly call the last three years good, the old saying has some merit. But, as you probably suspect, this is not the end. Deep down you know it is only the beginning. You have only scratched the surface of the Great Conversation. For, as you have read syntopically on the ideas of God and Man, Truth and Lies, Good and Evil, you have no doubt come to a better understanding of what you believe and how these beliefs affect the way you ought to live. Yet, you also have probably thought that the more you consider these ideas, the more you realize how much you don’t know! Regardless it is now time to push on - to consider more seriously the idea of Beauty and, as a conclusion of sorts, how you ought to decide how to live – what we will call a study of Ethics.
It is probably clear to you by now that the ideas you have been studying are intricately intertwined; that is, that your view of one will necessarily influence your view of another. This will also be apparent to you as you consider the ideas of Beauty and Ethics. In a sense both can quite rightly be seen as the fruit or flower of your previous studies, yet both ideas do not lend themselves to the neat comparison/contrast relationship that characterized the ideas in the previous levels. Therefore, you will deal with them separately – roughly a half of the year devoted to each.
Enjoy the literature chosen for this year’s study, but more than enjoy, determine to act on what you have learned. Determine to make these four years not an end, but a true beginning. Determine to seek the jewel of wisdom in all its facets, and determine to pursue it in faith, without doubting, so that you will not be like the double-minded man, unstable in all he does. Thank you for being part in the Great Conversation.
Beauty
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." It would seem that a nodding agreement to this old maxim would bring an end to our study post haste. Why? Well, inherent in this statement is the assumption that little or no criteria beyond personal taste can be advanced in determining what is or is not beautiful. If it is true that what is beautiful for you may not be beautiful for me, it would seem that the postmodernists may have won the day after all. If we are free to create our own meaning of beauty, independent of all else, than maybe we can indeed do the same for truth, goodness, or any of the Great Ideas.
Yet, can this really be? Is Beauty merely subjective? Can there not be objective standards for judging what is beautiful and what is not? Many have tried to capture some sort of objective standard in the past. Most notably, Thomas Aquinas, the great 13th century Roman Catholic theologian, set forth essential standards for Beauty, saying that for something to be beautiful it must have integrity, proportion, harmony, and clarity. He equated Beauty closely with Goodness. For him goodness calms our desires while beauty calms it by being seen or known. Hence, Aquinas would listen to the music of someone like John cage with a rather pinched expression. He would see no clarity, no harmony, no integrity, therefore, no Beauty. While you probably would agree with Aquinas concerning the lack of Beauty in Cage’s music, what about judging the degree of beauty in a particular landscape, a person, a painting, a building, or a culture? Things start to get a little fuzzy.
Like most ideas, we can probably find a sort of middle ground in our discussion. Surely there must be some kind of objective standard for Beauty through which room is left for individual taste. Mortimer Adler supports the importance of coming to an understanding of objective standards for Beauty by noting that in cultures where acceptance of subjectivism and relativism in the sphere of Beauty are accepted, this then spreads to judgements of good and evil, and then to statements about truth. What he is saying is that if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then surely the line between good and evil and truth and lies will soon be blurred. It would also seem that his observations work the other way as well. As we become more given to relativism in terms of truth and goodness, our idea of beauty follows suit. Can we not see this played out in our culture today? Sadly, even among Christians, we can see that the war rages over what is beautiful and what is not.
The Christian camp can essentially be divided into three groups in its view of the beautiful. In the area of art, for example, fundamentalists tend to look with suspicion and isolate themselves from all contemporary attempts at artistic expression. Transformational Christians campaign for believers to engage and renew the arts. Finally, synthesists tend to justify most forms of art and use them as a means of something good in and of itself. And, if you step out of Christian circles, you’ll be faced with a multitude of opinions of what constitutes Beauty. If you don’t believe this, take a walk through your local mall this Friday night!
It should be apparent by now that the idea of Beauty is a complex one. Socrates put it simply and…well, beautifully. "Beautiful things are difficult," he said. Indeed they are. However, we must not avoid them because they are difficult. The Bible urges us to pursue an understanding of Beauty - the beauty of nature, beauty in the arts and architecture, beauty of people and nations, and, of course, the definition of Beauty itself, the Shekinah glory of God. It is hoped that this year’s study will open your eyes and sharpen your senses, but it is also hoped that it will continue to engage your intellect.
A right understanding of Beauty must necessarily go hand in hand with a right understanding of Truth and Goodness. You cannot have one without the others, or, at least, you cannot possess it wholly. These three (Truth, Goodness, Beauty) have been described as both the fundamental and transcendent values of culture, values by which all other values are judged. We see this idea clarified quite wonderfully in Tolkien’s tale, The Lord of the Rings. For those of you who have read this work you will recall the state of the Shire prior to Frodo’s quest to destroy the ring. The Hobbits existed in a sort of idealized agrarian paradise. For the most part integrity, harmony, clarity reigned and it was beautiful. Now, recall the state of the Shire toward the end of the book when the four hobbits return. The evil wizard, Saruman, had taken up residence at Bag End where he and his group of ruffians had begun to transform the Shire into a wasteland. No integrity, no harmony, no clarity…no Truth, no Goodness, and certainly, no Beauty. It is not until Frodo and his friends rally the other hobbits to stand for what is True that their Goodness can be seen in action. And only when the Shire is scourged of all Lies and Evil does Sam have a chance to begin to return his land to its former state of Beauty. Oh read the Lord of the Rings with fresh eyes! Tolkien captures the relationship between Truth, Goodness, and Beauty as only he could.
Ultimately what you believe concerning Truth, Goodness, and Beauty will depend on how you answer this question: Is God or man the measure of all things? In the end this will determine how you will live in this present age. And that leads us to our final topic…
Ethics
Simply stated ethics is the study of right and wrong. In any study of ethics you will learn to make judgements concerning the way you will choose to live. It is also here that you will determine what motivates you to live as you do. To illustrate this, let us consider a small child. Early on this child may learn whether stealing is either right or wrong. Usually he will accept this teaching without question. However, the day soon arrives when that child will need to choose how he will live. Using our example, he must ask himself, "Will I steal or not?" Not only that but he also must consider his reason for the decision he makes.
Now, as an astute reader, you will have noted that we have strayed a bit beyond the realm of pure ethics (judgement) and have moved into the area of morality (action). That is because it would not be wholly beneficial or practical to simply naval gaze for half a year around moral dilemmas. So, you will at times use the two terms (ethics and morality) interchangeably. In this way it is hoped you will avoid being like the man who knows what is right, but never gets around to doing it. In other words you will have really wrestled with real issues.
You can imagine that judgements about what is right and wrong hit at all points of the compass when you begin to consider the opinions of people who hold one of many worldviews that are manifest about us. But, what is pretty clear to all but the most extreme is that everyone is wired with a desire to know what is the right thing to do. Not only that, but people act on this concept everyday as they make decisions. Should I go over the speed limit even though I’m late for that appointment? Should I skip church today because I’m tired from a late night? Should I ask permission to hunt on Mr. Brown’s land? Should I try to find the owner of the $10 bill that I found in the mall just now?
Since the Fall man has struggled with the idea of ethical behaviour. Libraries could be filled with the books written on the topic. Wars have been fought over it. Nations have divided. Relationships have been broken. Churches have split. It’s kind of fun to debate a friend over some abstract ethical exception but a serious grappling with one’s own ideas of ethical behaviour is where the rubber hits the road. It’s easy to see that for Plato, Augustine, Calvin, Dewey, and even your local abortionist that decisions about ethics matters, but it should matter for you, too! As one scholar declared, "Ideas have consequences."
We need to act on what we know and behave in a way that is consistent with what we believe. To try to leave this part of our Great Ideas study in abstraction would be to make one out to be an egghead. No one wants to be labeled as one of those, now, do they?
In the end the decisions that you make concerning your own personal ethic will be based in part on what you have learned in your study of the ideas of God, Man, Truth, Goodness and Beauty. It has certainly been a long-range goal of this course that you will draw on that knowledge as you read the material associated with this last leg of your work, the selection of which is tiny indeed when compared to the epicloth of choice available. However, when considered as a whole, you ought to be well equipped to make the kind of ethical decisions with which you will be faced in the years ahead.
Eric Gill once said, "Take care of the truth and goodness, and beauty will look after itself." By extension it is safe to add, "…and with these a right relationship with both God and man becomes what our Creator has always intended it to be – a way of life." Amen! May it be so!
Materials Studied in Level Four
- How To Read a Book (Portions)
- The Bible (Portions)
- The Republic -Penguin Ed. (Portions)
- The Song of Roland
- Till We Have Faces
- Various Poems
- Various Short Stories
- Smith of Wooten Major
- How Should We Then Live?
- The Odyssey
- Nichomachean Ethics (Portions)
- The Merchant of Venice
- Calvin’s Institutes (Book IV)
- The Prince
- Various Protestant Reformed Documents
- Farmer Giles of Ham
- The Scarlet Letter
- The Unaborted Socrates
- Brave New World
