Beauty, Truth, Goodness

To an extent I find surprising, philosophical interest in goodness, truth and beauty is widespread.  Most recently I was listening to a talk and a philosopher explained CS Lewis' atheism quoting his autobiography. Everything he loved - myths, poetry, ancient civility and humanity and ideals - he believed to be REALLY false, just a local pocket of evolved mental machinery functioning as it should in its particular contingent circumstances, not expressing any durable or universal reality; whereas the truth was a prosaic, storyless, universe careering very slowly into a heat-death ditch. Even the story of that death gets sexed up by telling it.  Even the 'So what?' question makes an error of category, that the question and questioner are somehow independent of the meaninglessness of the universe.

I must preface what follows by saying that I have yet to read a lot of Kierkegaard, so this is a survey of questionable value. Don't use this in arguments about Kierkegaard.  I hope, readership, you don't find yourself in those too often, and that what follows is interesting, illuminating...

Kierkegaard parallels beauty, truth and goodness with three stages of self-hood: the aesthetic, the rational and the religious.  Each has its own self-contained universe of values.  Hence the great evil to be shunned by someone living in the aesthetic is boredom, the great good is pleasing aesthetic experience.  To the aesthete, the bible is at best, interesting, often beautiful, strange, sentimentally inspiring, rich with visions.

The rational is the space of the philosophers, and the greatest value is truth. The philosophical mind can still see beauty and enjoy it, but also asks whether this beauty affirms anything true or is a lie.  Kierkegaard says, in Fear and Trembling, that 'The philosopher makes the movement of infinity - he goes up and up, he goes down and down...' The philosopher has set his sights on understanding everything, taking it all into his rational system. If the philosopher looks at his place, his finiteness, his localness, he is stuck with a problem. In reading the bible, the philosopher wants to understand and systematise the nature of God using the text as evidence. He is stuck with the view from somewhere, rather than the view from nowhere/everywhere - the objective view.  A rational philosopher would despair.

Kierkegaard thought almost everyone was in despair whether we know it or not - that we are each a disordered, competing, bundle of tensions, with no hope of overall satisfaction. The philosopher, by his superior maturity, is more aware of it than most, but not able to get out of it, not able to resolve the tensions.

The way through, for Kierkegaard, is in maturing into the religious phase.  In this phase, one develops a defining commitment.  I would say that one makes it, but the truth is almost the reverse - it makes one.  Out of the confusion of the community of mind, a single resolve becomes possible.  Something outside suddenly takes all one's commitment.  This, I think, is the transition through 'Absolute Critique' that Hajime Tanabe advocates as the way forward for philosophy, to repentance, and finding the Other power*.  There is this knot to tie in  one's life, in maturing into the religious commitment to the Good.  Finding the Good outside the self is something which, in this bad and bloody world, seems to require an extraordinary interruption of the normal course of events.

* I am not sure how much Kierkegaard Tanabe was across. I would be surprised if there was much, but they are on the same page.