The Transcendentals: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty

First Comment

Well done Reverend.

Master Yoda teaching us about the force. Lol.

As a philosophy nerd, I greatly enjoy your outlines on the ideas that have so molded the world, especially within a Christian context.

An excellent presentation of the lost heritage of the West that needs to be relearned and reappropriated. Roman Catholic philosopher like Peter Kreeft have carried this heritage, but unless the reformation traditions regain their classical philosophical roots, their outlook on life will continue to suffer from cultural amnesia. The same is true of the cultural West as a whole. It cannot move forward until a vision of truth, goodness and beauty is recovered. Back to the sources of a Christian humanism!

But Luther was a nominalist

I have heard this phrase a lot doing charlotte mason with my kids. Really appreciate the deep explanation of where it comes from.

The format and subject matter of the last two videos has taken your instruction to a new and higher level. Stay with it.

What do you think of the idea that the transcendentals (truth, goodness, beauty) correspond with the theological virtues (faith, hope, charity/love) and the walls containing frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura depicting the branches of human knowledge: School of Athens (philosophy/science)/Disputation (religion/theology), Virtues (law), and Parnassus (poetry/literature) respectively?

It's also interesting to see how the cardinal virtues (justice, prudence/wisdom, temperance/moderation, and fortitude/courage) were defined by Plato and Aristotle and adopted by the Church Fathers, and it's so cool how the Logos serves as a common thread in the truth seeking disciplines! It seems to reconcile any tensions of balancing the two pillars of the west (reason and revelation, Athens and Jerusalem, or Greco-Roman culture and Christian tradition).

Percy Dearmer based his views on liturgy partly on the idea that Goodness, Truth, and Beauty are all manifestations of God in the world, and so art aimed at beauty is appropriate as an aspect of worship.

excellent video!

Good work here I really liked the book as well. Its my experience that in the Church we tend to acknowledge that the first two are objective, however many Christians in my experience belive beauty is subjective. This has ramifications for how we treat the liturgy, view beauty in nature, and on the art and culture we create.

This was a very good distillation of a lot of the history of philosophy. Thank you, Dr. Cooper!

I think Platonic views of beauty are highly problematic. Chords that have dissonance and sound unpleasant can be useful in constructing great music with visceral emotion. We can also have novels that describe the ugliness of humanity at its worst in beautiful ways. Ugliness and beauty, chaos and order, and harmony and disharmony are part of the emotional landscape that art explores. The point is to make you feel something, not to create something "perfect" in anything like a mathematical sense. Too much order makes music boring and predictable, and there is no perfect form or ideal form. What makes music interesting is partly its imperfections. That's what makes it human. If we have machines or software playing the music, it begins to lose uniqueness that a human performance brings to it, which involves slight imperfections characteristic of individual expression.

Platonic morality fails on so many levels. I don't even know what it would mean. The nature of human connection is necessarily imperfect to a degree simply because we are mentally imperfect and have psychological needs that cannot always be met, which affects unconscious behavior. A lot of problematic behavior isn't even consciously known or necessarily controlled by us, such as attachment styles that are dysfunctional. It's also impossible to be perfect if you cannot cognitively process emotions in early developmental phases, so no human could possibly be perfect in this imperfect world, and having moral standards that require perfection makes no sense if it cannot be realized even potentially. It's obvious we are creatures that are meant to bond together and can only be emotionally well-regulated and in control of our behavior if we have the proper dependent relationships early on in childhood. A lot can go wrong when human attachment isn't formed or is inconsistent, and relationships are always imperfect because meeting the needs of other human beings and children is not always possible. The traumatic experiences prevent emotional and moral growth even if they aren't our fault, and this doesn't seem like the kind of world you'd expect if moral perfection was the goal in some spiritual, idealist sense. To me this Platonic world makes little sense to the messy world of human interaction, and religious dogmas certainly don't help that moralize what probably are developmental problems and insecurities that give rise to relational conflict.

You've been on a roll recently, AC 24 on the mass, introduction to Lutheranism, and this have all been some of your finest work, thank you!

When you mentioned gore, some of the appeal is a matter of curiosity, not pleasure. This applies to a lot of things. I know that's the case for me. There's a curiosity of the anatomy of people, how medical procedures are done, how injuries occur, etc. This of course becomes corrupted in many people resulting in them having an appetite for such things.

Like i said, this applies to many things. When it comes to physical appearance of private parts, a person can be curious about it, admire it, or lust for it. This is why there's the debate over when it's acceptable to make nude or near nude art, because the debate is whether intention alone matters, perception alone matters, or both. I think a Christian certainly should see it as both for anything that's portrayed in media, because it's a sin of omission to knowinlgy produce something in an uncessary way that could have been cleaned up, which Hollywood does all the time, such as having a character with a vulgar mouth that doesn't need to be as vulgar as portrayed to get the point across, or in the case of gore, the character can be killed in a way that doesn't require showing it in unnecessary detail. That kind of detail is only necessary for medical instruction, or forensic studies.

Also, with classical gore, many people simply admire the silliness of the practical or special effects used to emulate something gory. A good example would be the melting faces of the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The good thing about subjectivism is that those people who propose and support it do a completely awful job of convincing anyone rational to it's legitimacy, and thus make the case a more classical and objective philosophy all the more compelling. Take a regular person, and present them two pieces of art, one is the Salvador Mundi, and the other is a week-old banana nailed to a white panel of drywall. Ask them which one they prefer or believe is the more appealing stylistically, and why. You need to have a doctorate in Cognitive Dissonance and 13 years of field experience in coping to possibly convince yourself that there is not objective beauty, truth, or goodness in this world, as wicked as it may be (and that wickedness brings it all back to a perfect creator who made the perfection that we so dearly love to destroy).

I would love to see you and the theologypugcast do an episode together!

I am going to use this in either senior-level Government or Theology/Apologetics...I'm even tempted to use your book as a textbook...This has so many applications in terms of how we view the world, the arts, ethics, government, etc...I'm not sure why Christians are so hesitant or uninformed about this issue. One of the reasons I became a Lutheran from the Holiness/Evangelical tradition was the beauty found in music (especially Bach and the Baroque), and wondering why most Christians have abandoned this great tradition in the name of pragmatism....This is awesome. I need to write a review on amazon for the book itself...

Very interesting video! Taste and beauty are clearly two distinct things. I like both music and movies which I admit are not beautiful, nor of high quality. Regarding for example Ethiopian iconography; when I was first introduced to it, it seemed strange, but I still saw the beauty in it. The relativist mind seems to want to equate taste with beauty, so as to justify their (often) radical and eccentric taste.

I don't think I've ever heard you cover it, but what are your thoughts on the transcendental arguments for God? I actually find them pretty compelling even from my cursory glances of Bonjour and other modern epistemologist that have utilized it.

Could you do a video on the Straussian movement and its interpretation of Plato? I've recently started learning about it in a class I'm taking at Davenant Hall. I'd be interested to get your perspective.

Re: Kant's categorical imperative, you want something that is more flexible, but Paul says the following: "And why not do evil that good may come?—as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just" (Rom. 3:8)

If you want a defense of art against Plato that is still within the classical frame, I'd suggest Sir Philip Sidney's "Defense of Posey" (Poetry). It's also known as "An Apology for Poetry."

I'd also wager that Burke's view of the sublime is worth adding to that conversation.

You might want to ask Professor John Frame. He's into his "triperspectivalism".

There are many examples of the lie of necessity/mercy in the extremis of war, etc, in Scripture. A full list is given in John Frame's "Doctrine of the Christian Life".

The categorical imperative is just the Golden Rule. Do unto others. Universalized. And no, the Nazi challenge isn't a problem with the imperative or the Golden Rule, but a false universalization of telling the truth in that case. Nobody would want anybody to tell the Nazis they're hiding there in that situation.

I really want to critique the choice of Filet Mignon as the example of beauty in food, but that's straining at gnats.

Man, this was helpful. Thank you!

And you will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.
-Jeremiah 29:13

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.
-John 3:16

Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out.
-Acts 3:19

If you are in North America, please go check out any of the churches available to you: OPC, PCA, Rpcna, Urcna, or a Canrc church
(These are conservative and actual Presbyterian/Reformed churches)

If you can’t find one of the conservative presby churches then, maybe an Lcms Lutheran church.

If you’re Scottish, I recommend the Free Church of Scotland and the APC.
(Different from the Church of Scotland)

If you’re English I recommend the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in England & Wales and the Free Church of England
(Different from the Church of England)

Also online you can look up church finders for each of the groups, it will show you locations.

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
- Hebrews 10:24-25