Pursuing the True, Good, and Beautiful: The Beautiful Inspires us to Excellence
Modern people like to say with conviction that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” It sounds fair, acknowledging that we all have our perspectives. But it is not the historical view of beauty, and it is actually something like saying that nothing is really beautiful unless I say it is. It is a deconstructivist approach to meaning that turns beauty into a mass of confusion, like the exterior of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
The classical view of beauty is that, first and foremost, it is an expression of universal standards. There is symmetry and order to it. It conforms with mathematical principles. Furthermore, Plato said that beauty is a thing reflecting its eternal form. C.S. Lewis wrote in The Abolition of Man that beautiful things have a real impact on our emotions. When we see a horse running across a field, we are all generally drawn to the sight. We recognize that the horse is doing what it is meant to do.
Many (though not all) neurological studies support Lewis on this idea. MRI scans have demonstrated that specific regions of the brain light up when exposed to beautiful things, as defined by mostly agreed-upon universal standards. While none of the studies are conclusive, common sense, or intuition, does lead us to agree that we are all inspired by the same things: a sunset, an image of Paris at night, a snow-covered woods, the actions of a courageous person. And that is really the point in the end. We seek to be inspired to do good and to understand how beautiful things consistently inspire us. If a person seeks to be excellent in a field that provides value, we are inspired to follow the example. This tells us that excellence is true and real. That we are inspired by courage tells us that courage is true and real.
We are not always going to agree on specific examples. And it is also true that if we are not trained as children to recognize why a thing is beautiful, we tend to gravitate towards things that are base and subjective. This is why our students study the principles and forms of art, and why understanding music theory is just as important as learning to sing a song or play a musical instrument at a basic level. The same applies in math and science and the humanities. When we learn to see what constitutes excellence in behavior and understanding, we become more and more inspired to pursue truth and goodness throughout our lives.
We will always have our preferences. Certain things may inspire us more than others. But when our education is characterized by a commitment to understanding universal beauty, our ability to aspire to accomplish good things becomes more and more ingrained in the adults we become.
Mike Terry
Natl. Dir. of Classical Education
Founders Classical Academies