The Beautiful & Art

The Medici Chapel in Florence (also known as “The Sagrestia Nuova” or “New Sacristy”). Commissioned in 1520 by Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici (later Pope Clement VII) and Pope Leo X as a mausoleum for members of the Medici family. Designed by Michelangelo, one of his earliest major architectural works.

I love, love, love “The Beautiful.” But it’s Heph that inspired the following question in me. He wrote his dissertation of Kant’s third critique, and he asked the questions:

To what extent is The Beautiful as a value diminishing in the age of modernity? Is the diminishing linked to this Cartesian separation of mind and body (and the “death” of God) as The Beautiful itself could be seen as a marriage of body and soul (and a way to Spirit)?

And the question I find most intriguing of his–to what extent is the ability to sense The Beautiful what makes us human? If true, could the diminishing of The Beautiful as a value also mean a diminishing of our humanity? And could a return to the value be an answer to the Cartesian dualism that continues to bedevil modernity (not just metaphysically but on a cultural level)?

I find these questions soooo fascinating. I might even invite Heph to write about these questions. They’re very much linked to the theme of this blog–which is the marriage of body and soul. And they’re linked to a critique of modernity, too–including materialism, dogmatism, Puritanism, even the deep injustices inherent in capitalism.

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