https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=UMRYu1gTyZA

So this gets us into the discussion that I think is, for me, sort of the deepest levels of the phenomenology and the cognition, which is, I mean, Jonathan would know this is the classical doctrine, the classical way of putting this is the convertible of the, the transcendentals are convertible into each other. So somehow the true and the good and the beautiful are one, but not mathematical identity. This is really important. It’s not like you can, right? And so, and Aquinas wrestles with this. I’ve been reading Maximus, by the way. I think you see a reflection of that in the idea of the Trinity too. Of course, right? And so the issue there is, and I’ve been reading D.C. Schindler on the Catholicity of Reason, and he talks about this, he gets it from Balthazar, he talks about the primacy of beauty, the of goodness and the ultimacy of truth, that they are superlative, but in different ways. So what he means by that is there’s a primacy to beauty. And this is a classic platonic argument. If you don’t have beauty, all the other normativities are not available to you. So why write? That’s not so, like I wrote a chapter in my last book on the necessity of beauty, but I don’t understand why that, why primary? Why primary? And what does that say about our perception that it’s primary? Because you don’t have to think about it. Is that part of it? Is that apprehended? I don’t understand exactly. Well, a way of thinking about it is, Scari wrote a really beautiful book called Beauty and How It Prepares Us for Truth and Justice. And the idea, so let’s take something that’s very culturally relevant and something I’ve been talking about. So we are immersed in what Recur called a hermeneutics of suspicion. The hermeneutics of suspicion is that appearances are always distorting, distracting, deceiving us from reality. That’s the hermeneutics of suspicion. And the moment of truth is when you reveal the hidden cabal, the conspiracy, right? This is the hermeneutics of suspicion. And it’s, you know, and Recur’s point is we got this. That’s what Freud does. Marx does. It’s the uncovering. And so the people- Right, here’s what’s really going on. The deconstruction is here’s what’s really going on. Exactly. And it’s everywhere now. Right. And here’s Marla Parti’s point about this. Right. His point is, but wait, the hermeneutics of that, the hermeneutics of suspicion is always dependent on this. If I say that’s unreal, oh, look, I do that because I say that’s real. Realization is always a comparative judgment. This is his point. And so does he accept the notion that there is something? Because one of the things you see in the postmodern types, and I was looking at Richard Rorty’s work the other day, and he seems to buy the postmodern idea that everything is just a network of linguistic representation and that there is no real beyond that. That’s Dylan’s critique of that being semi-logical reductionism. All you do is transfer all the markers of reality onto properties of the text. And then you prevent the text from being subject to the very criticisms you’re making of reality. Yeah, well, that seems credible to me. OK, so it was Marla Parti accepts the reality of beauty. Exactly. Because think about what this means. If the hermeneutics of suspicion is that appearances distract us, deceive us, distort. There has to be something under that. Right. And beauty is when appearances disclose reality. Right. Yeah. That’s the artist’s take or that’s the liturgical take or it’s the beauty of a church or the icon or the it’s the notion that that that God or ultimate reality or however you want to phrase it is disclosing itself to us and that appears to us as the connection between that which we encounter, these patterned beings that we encounter and what they reveal to us about the other transcendentals. Well, when I wrote this chapter, which is my favorite chapter in both books, it’s try to make one room in your house as beautiful as possible. And so this sort of step behind, well, order your room first so that it’s just not cluttered and and idiotic and and running at counter purposes to whatever your purposes are, reflection of your internal chaos. Get it orderly. But that’s not good enough. The next thing is see if you can make a relationship with beauty, which is really it’s really people are afraid of that because I’ve watched people try to buy art and they’re terrified of buying art. The reason is, is because their choice puts their taste on display. And if their taste is undeveloped, then their inability to distinguish between a false appearance and the genuine reality of beauty is immediately revealed to people. So they’re terrified of it. But they’re also equally terrified of beauty. So let me tell you a story about this. If you don’t mind, I bought some Russian impressionist paintings for my father and I liked them a lot. This particular artist, the Russian impressionist style is like the French impressionist style, except it’s a lot rougher. The brushstrokes are thicker, so it’s lower resolution, but it’s equally beautiful in terms of palette. And I have a variety of paintings. If you get some distance from them, they just snap into representations. So lovely. And so I sent my dad like eight of these paintings and my mom took one look at them and she said, those are not coming out of the basement. And my mom is a conservative person, so she’s not high in openness. She’s not that interested in ideas and her aesthetic sense isn’t sophisticated. Now my mother has a lot of lovely attributes, but my dad and her differ in that. And so he loved these paintings and then he made these frames for them. And then he brought one up and my mom tolerated that. And then he brought another one up and then she tolerated that. And then like all eight of them eventually made it upstairs. And then a few years later I was there and she told me how much she loved the paintings. But it really, they really set her off. And I think it was partly because, well, if you’re, imagine you’re comfortable in your canonical perceptions of objects in some sense. And then the impressions come along and say, you know, you could look at that whole landscape as if it was nothing but the interplay of color. And that’s, we forget how radical that is. I mean, those paintings caused riots in Paris when they were first showed impressionist paintings. And that’s what my mother was reacting to. It’s like, oh my God, there’s a whole different way of looking at the world. I don’t want to see that. And it’s an invitation to that, which is beyond the triviality of your perceptions, let’s say. But it’s to think that there’s nothing about that that’s worth being frightened of or challenging. You don’t understand conservatives if you don’t see that. But in terms of in terms of Judy, one of the things that also that, especially now, you can, one of the problems or the way that Judy can kind of overwhelm us is that we feel as if if we give ourselves, we’re afraid of the suspicion, the hermeneutics of suspicion. We’re afraid that if we see reality discloses itself to us and we can see the connection between that which is appearing to me and some something behind it, then I’m afraid that if I jump, if I make that leap, then I’ll be betrayed or that or that it will write that it won’t turn out to be real. Well, sometimes it’s not like there are there is it is possible to to be tricked by by the appearance of it. And this gets you to to haunt, you know, saving beauty, his critique of what you see going on right now is he argues if you read ancient texts, if you read Plotinus, one of the features they’ll say about beauty is it’s striking and disturbing and disrupting. Right. I want to come back to that about the transformative aspect of truth. But but the transformative theory of truth. But and Han talks about what we’ve done. Right. And he talks about it in other books, too, is we’ve reduced we try to reduce the beautiful to the smooth, which is the ease at which we can consume something. Yeah. Like the smooth outer cover of a car. Exactly. Right. One pixel resolution. Yes, yes. And and and because because what that does is it gives you and I’ll use this word deliberately, the veneer of beauty. But while protecting you from the hermetic suspicion. Yeah. Right. You see that. So what we do is and then he says in pornography is the primary example of that, because what you do is you remove all threat, all mystery, all otherness from the person. So there’s no way they can strike you or disturb you. There are no way. Right. Yes, exactly. And so pornography is an example of of the smooth, completely overtaking the beautiful and being misunderstood as beautiful. But if that’s if you if you gentlemen are in agreement with what that means, that’s my answer to why the primacy of beauty, because if you do not get that ability to and I want to use this word and we’re in. Sorry, please go ahead. Then I’ll ask. Yeah, I want to say through the way I’m saying, like through my. Glasses beyond and by means of if we can’t properly get a moment where we can see through appearance into reality, we are locked into solipsism and skepticism. You need a primary. And if you do it, if you do it rather than it is called to you, then you are trapped. But you need you need something that calls you from beyond appearances so that you can properly align appearances to reality. And you realize that’s why the primacy is that the ontological calling you out of epistemology? I would argue that that’s Plato’s argument for how beauty. So when you say, OK, so I’ve thought, thought a lot about the relationship between love and truth. And I think love is primary and the truth is the handmaiden of love in some sense. But but so there’s a primacy there, I would say the primacy of love. But you’re making an argument for the primacy of beauty. And so are they contradictory? No, no, no, no, not at all, because Plato’s view of love. And you have to be careful because Plato is taking the Greek notion of Eros and he’s trying to bend it. And I think he’s trying to bend it towards what the Christians are going to eventually talk about in Agape. Right. OK, so take that as a caveat on what I’m saying. But nevertheless, what’s going on, right, is Plato says, no, no, no. What love is, is that you are called to beauty. And let me let me let me let me just try and show you give me a sec because there’s a connection. Yeah. OK, so a lot. This will sound like where’s he out of left field, but like truth, rationality. Most of the cognitive biases. In fact, there’s a growing argument that a lot of the cognitive biases, confirmation bias, blah, blah, blah, blah. A lot of them are actually versions, aspects of the my side bias egocentrism. I won’t make that argument here. I think it’s a good argument. But let’s say even if it’s only partially true, this is an important point. And Spinoza got this right. This orientation, self-relevance, how things are relevant to me. Right. That sort of fundamental egocentrism, a fundamental way in which you’re prioritizing your perception on the world. Right. You can’t reason your way out of that. But knows the most logical of the philosopher says, no, no, the only thing that will invert the arrow of relevance is love. This is Murdoch’s point. Love is when you recognize something other than yourself is real. Right.