“Hope in the Truth of Beauty”

Description:

Philosophers have long considered three subjects of contemplation to be paramount: the True, the Good, and the Beautiful—called the Transcendentals. All three of these are considered by many people today purely relativistic concepts, and one of the goals of the Catholic educator must be to contradict the prevailing relativism. Of the three, beauty is often thought to be the most subjective, for “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” There is some truth to this old saying, but it is not the whole truth. Great thinkers have over the ages argued that beautiful creations have some characteristics in common. Advocates of literary art have further maintained that beautiful writings are effective in moving our hearts to follow truth and to do what is good. We should find profound hope in fact that the imagination can capture great truths of the human heart and move us to live virtuously.

Biography:
Ben Lockerd was Professor of English at Grand Valley State University, where he received the Alumni Association’s Outstanding Educator Award. He serves as a Research Fellow for the Faulkner University graduate programs in Humanities. He is the author of The Sacred Marriage: Psychic Integration in “The Faerie Queene” (1987) and Aethereal Rumours: T. S. Eliot’s Physics and Poetics (1998), as well as articles on Eliot and on Renaissance literature. He also edited a collection of essays entitled T. S. Eliot and Christian Tradition (2014). He has served as president of the T. S. Eliot Society.

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