beautiful lives

i have tried to say something about (or rather, to point at) a kind of beauty that attaches to actions in virtue of their being morally/spiritually excellent. just as we can perceive actions to be beautiful in this way, it also seems that we can perceive/describe lives to be beautiful in this way.

my initial suspicion is that in describing a life as beautiful, we will inevitably be making a kind of narrative judgment about that life. that is, we will be viewing the life as a story, a narrative whole. and what makes a life (perhaps we should say lifetime) beautiful will be features of that lifetime viewed as a narrative -e.g the way that earlier actions and events can be frustrated or redeemed by later actions and events.

perhaps the basic thought here is that beauty is a matter of proportion, or relation between parts, and thus the beauty of a lifetime is a feature of how the 'parts' of that lifetime fit together into a coherent (narrative) whole. but then seems too broad, because there is a kind of coherance to a very evil and very ugly life -we can construct meaningful narratives of cruel and petty lives as well as kind and noble ones.

on the one hand, lifetimes which are beautiful seem to be ones which are long and full and well-lived. this fits with the idea that moral beauty is connected to the human τελος -a long, full, well-lived life is one that involves many of the goods internal to a human life, a life that realizes the over-arching human good of happiness (in the aristotelian sense). such a life, we might say, 'looks' the way a human life ought to look, and that it looks this way is what makes it seem beautiful to us.

to call such a life 'beautiful' is (in part) to express our sense of the fittingness or appropriateness of such a life. as an illustration of this sense, consider the following burial practice of the people of ghana (as told to me by a ghanaian man in chicago): if the deceased is 70 years or older, it is customary to wear white as a celebration of the person's full life. if the deceased is much less than 70 years, it is customary to wear white, as an expression of mourning over the fact that the person did not receive his full complement of years.

on the other hand, however, it also seems that a life can be beautiful even if it is cut short. for christians, the paradigm case is surely jesus. and in addition to jesus, we can look also to the lives of the martyrs and saints, whose lives we find beautiful, even though many were cut tragically short. in fact, in these cases, it the nature of their deaths seems to contribute (somehow) to the beauty of their whole lives.

thus, if a long and full life has a kind of beauty, a life cut short does not seem to be ugly so much as tragic (though, perhaps not ultimately tragic). and a life that is tragically short may also be beautiful, if it is well-lived.

a life that is poorly lived, however, may be ugly. this is especially the case, i think, if the life is marked by: 1) selfishness, small-minded focus on oneself, or 2) cruelty, coldness, bitterness toward others. for example, a life whose culminating moment was the betryal of a loved one or a selfish power grab seems to me to be especially unattractive. (note: these two qualities are more-or-less the opposite of the qualities of actions which in my last post i said seemed to have a particular beauty).

perhaps our perception of the beauty of a lifetime depends of the kind of moral evaluations that we see as 'basic' or 'fundamental' to the person's character as her character was expressed in the various parts of her lifetimes. such evaluations will be connected to (part and parcel of?) the narrative description of a person's life. thus, reflecting on a lifetime, including both mundane and major events, we can ask was did she become a caring and thoughtful person, and do the parts of her life reflect this? or did she grow increasingly into a very bitter and heartless, and did this come out in the most important moments?

there also seems to be a close connection between living a beautiful life and living a meaningful life. it is hard to know what 'meaningful' means here. but it is strange to imagine a life being called beautiful if that life seemed absurd, or we thought of it as a 'wasted life.' and part of what makes the lives of the saints beautiful is the way they are connected to a process of redemption that is larger than themselves. isn't one reason the life of christ is beautiful is what that life means?

'she has done a beautiful deed for me'

in thinking about the beauty of the soul -moral beauty, beautiful lives, living beautifully- perhaps we can gain some insight by thinking about specific actions which strike us as expressing or exemplifying some kind of beauty.

there are certain human actions which, in virtue of their moral or spiritual goodness, strike us as beautiful. that is, they may not always appear to us as beautiful, but when they do appear to us in their fullness -when we really see them and are moved by them- then the word we reach for, if we reach for a word at all, is 'beautiful.' as examples of this, consider the stories of the prodigal son and the good samaritan. in my experience, the atonement is also a paradigm instance of this kind of beauty.

to describe such actions as 'the right thing to do' or even 'virtuous' somehow seems to miss something about the power and attractiveness of these actions. and yet, in seeing these actions as beautiful, part of what i feel is a deep sense that acting in this way is right, is proper, is an expression of the true way to live as a human being. also, it is as if the beauty of the action is connected to something else -something beyond itself, something abiding and real.

i am inclined to say that the beauty of such actions cannot be understood except in terms of the τελος of a human life. that is, if you try to understand what makes them beautiful without making reference to the end of a human life -and hence to what it means to live well- then you won't get very far. put another way, it is in virtue of their virtue that such acts are beautiful. we might say, then, that the kind of beauty they have is moral beauty.

at the same time, however, it seems that not all virtuous acts strike us as beautiful in the same way. perhaps all virtuous activity partakes of the καλον (beautiful/fine/noble), but perhaps not in an equal way. for instance, we take moderation to be a virtue, but there seems to be little that is especially beautiful about the moderate person. it may be good to have an appropriate desire for food and drink, but is not taking the second piece of cake a beautiful thing?

my intuition is that beautiful actions tend to be especially associated with: 1) self-sacrifice, or courage, and 2) reconciliation, or forgiveness. there is something moving, something beautiful, about a person who goes to great risk for others -e.g. the central characters in 'hotel rwanda' or 'schindler's list. there is something similarly beautiful about reconciliation and forgiveness -e.g. the father's acceptance of the prodigal son.

perhaps both of these things are beautiful because they are connected to love, and to an especially great love.

both self-sacrifice/courage and reconciliation/forgiveness seem to involve something excessive, something extraordinary. there is a kind of lavishness to them. in this sense, they are connected to being great-souled, and to generosity. i am not sure exactly what this lavishness consists in: perhaps the lack of concern for oneself, perhaps the single-minded focus on what is of most value.

this kind of lavishness seems to be involved when jesus is annointed by the woman at bethany (mark 14:3-9) what the woman has done seems like an impractical waste to the onlookers; jesus understands her action to have been done out of great concern for himself; and he calls her action beautiful (καλον εργον).

maybe, though, this way of thinking runs the risk of putting too much weight on 'extraordinary' actions. it seems that 'mundane' things can also be beautiful, and that some actions are even beautiful because they are so 'ordinary' -e.g. an evening walk between a couple that has been married for 40 years, and who has taken an evening walk together for as long as they can remember.

also, i don't want to identify beautiful actions with heroic actions, though there does seem to be some important connection. actions or expressions can be beautiful without being what we would call heroic. two examples: listening and laughing.

grammars of beauty (or, is everyone beautiful?)

thanks to natalie, dan and michael for your excellent comments on the last post. so many interesting points, and so much to think about.

here is a question i am not sure how to answer: is every person beautiful? if i take 'person' to mean something like 'self' and beauty to be non-physical beauty, then i don't know what to say. but even if i take beauty to be physical beauty, then i'm still not sure how to answer the question.

on the one hand, it seems to make perfect sense to think of physical attractiveness as a kind of spectrum: on one end, some people are beautiful, and on the other end some people are ugly, and then most people are in the middle somewhere between the two extremes. on the other hand, however, part of me also wants to say that all people are beautiful -physically beautiful- just in virtue of being people. if one just looks at a person in the right way -whether they are young or old, pale or dark-skinned, fat or skinny- then you will see that the person is truly (physically) beautiful.

i am not sure what to make of these competing intuitions. as a first approach, perhaps we can say that we have two different 'grammars' of physical beauty, two different ways of speaking about physical beauty that are somewhat separate from each other. the first way of speaking allows us to make distinctions between what is 'beautiful' and 'ugly,' and to make all the other familiar evaluations of appearance -cute, handsome, pretty, dreamy, etc. the second way of speaking allows us to say things like, 'everyone is beautiful' and 'you can find beauty in every face.'

i have the suspicion that it isn't easy to reconcile these two grammars of beauty, that behind each of them is a different set of criteria, a different way of making judgments. i also have the suspicion that each of these two grammars is consistent in its own way, and thus that its not easy to show that one is 'wrong', or for adherents of one grammar to 'disprove' the adherents of another (and perhaps most of accept both in some way).

these two grammars of (physical) beauty seem to be attached to different ways of seeing people. to adopt a certain way of speaking about physical appearance is to adopt a way of looking at people, of approaching their bodies, of allowing their bodies to appear to you in a certain way. to speak/think about physical beauty in a certain way is to be alive to, or closed off to, certain aspects of the bodies (and via the bodies, the selves) of those whom you encounter.

one consequence of this connection between speaking and seeing is that we can, without contradiction, recognize that our way of speaking/thinking about beauty might be wrong, simply because we cannot see properly. that is, it might be that we are not in a position to critique our own ways of speaking about physical beauty because our whole way of seeing and experiencing physical beauty is distorted.

beauty and τελος

thanks to bethany, nathan and dan for your insightful comments on my last couple posts. its wonderful to get such thoughtful contributions to the discussion. its given me a lot to consider and made me realize how little i've really thought about beauty in the past.

in my previous post, thinking about the production/marketing/consumption of beauty in our culture led me to think about the distinction between 'using' and 'appreciating' beauty, and the question of whether or not beauty is or should be 'for' something.

this seems to relate directly to the issue raised by dan in his comment of the connection between beauty and τελος (end, goal). with at least some kinds of beauty, it seems that what makes the thing beautiful is connected to the excellence of that thing defined with respect to the thing's end. for example, it seems that we might say that a space shuttle taking off is beautiful, or a tiger running at full speed is beautiful. and in these cases it is the proper functioning of the thing (defined in terms of the thing's end) that contributes to (or grounds or constitutes?) the beauty of the thing. however, if we take the beauty of niagara falls or of a fresh snowfall, then the role of function seems to come into play less, if at all.

even in the case of the space shuttle or the tiger, though, we can make a distinction between: 1) the beauty of the thing being connected to a τελος and 2) the beauty itself having some other purpose or τελος. i'm more ready to accept the first than the second, though i'm not sure what to think about bethany's suggestion that the purpose of beauty might be to foster worship. (i wonder: could we say that to see something as beautiful in a certain way just is to worship that thing? this, i think, takes us into the very interesting set of questions about the connection between beauty and delight and love -i'm thinking especially of augustine here)

what about the beauty of a human body? or a human soul? i am inclined to agree with dan that there is a very promising line of thought which understands the beauty of a body to be connected to the beauty of a soul in terms of the human τελος -that is, in terms of what the goods/ends of a human life are, how a human ought to live, and what kinds of things a human ought to be doing. the idea is that there are certain goods and excellences of a human soul that depend on or involve a certain kind of body. a human body can therefore be excellent because of the way it contributes to the excellence of the person's life. and a beautiful body is the kind of body that contributes to a beautiful life.

but is this quite right? it seems to make sense if we are thinking in terms of well-formed limbs, muscles of appropriate size for accomplishing tasks, the right number of toes, etc. but what about the beauty of a face? it seems that you can have a face that functions very well -sees, hears, smells well- but that is nevertheless not beautiful, perhaps even ugly.

there is an old tradition that thinks of beauty in terms of symmetry or proportion. this way of thinking about beauty can be made to fit with the notion of τελος -a thing's being well-proportioned is defined in terms of its parts fitting together as a whole in such a way that the whole acheives its end.

can a corpse be beautiful the way that a living thing is beautiful? is there a distinct kind of beauty to living things -e.g. the beauty of a bumble bee as it buzzes around flowers, vs. the beauty of a bumble bee pinned to a table and seen through a microscope?

perhaps we need to distinguish between: beautiful bodies, beautiful lives and living beautifully.

beauty and consumer culture (again)

the point of my last post was to distinguish between two different kinds of beauty -the beauty that is proper to a physical object vs the beauty that is proper to a human being with a rational soul- and to suggest that some of our (consumer) culture is based on the confused notion that we could get the latter (which we deeply want, even without realizing it) by bringing ourselves into close physical proximity to and/or enjoyment of the former. this does not mean, of course, that its wrong to appreciate the beauty of physical objects. rather, just that there is an important difference between appreciating the beauty of things (e.g. clothes, cars, tables, etc.) and thinking that one, qua human being, could become beautiful in and through those things.

relatedly, our consumer culture also raises a question about the use/consumption of beauty vs the detached-appreciation of beauty. my friend natalie has pointed out to me how much much our contemporary experience of beauty occurs in the context of consumption. when we encounter beautiful things, it is frequently, perhaps typically, in a situation where those things are being sold to us and we are being invited to buy them, to consume them.

likewise, i am tempted to say that a strikingly large amount of our consumption occurs in the context of beauty. things are sold to us because they are attractive; they are sold to us by beautiful people; they are put in boxes and covered with that are made to look sharp and appealing. but at the same time, it certainly isn't the case that our consumer culture has left us awash in beauty, is it? aren't we, somehow, surrounded by so much ugliness, cheapness, kitsch?

perhaps the notion of 'beauty' isn't helpful here, or in any case we need some more terms. maybe what is behind most advertising isn't so much beauty as the notion of the 'cool', but i'm not sure how to relate the form of the cool to the form of the beuatiful (the true, the good and the cool?)

in any case, what should we make of the use of beauty in producing and selling things? on the one hand, it seems good that in making things -whether clothes or cars or chairs- we should try to make these things well-designed, aesthetically appealing, even beautiful. to bring artistic craftsmanship and beauty into our everyday lives seems a worthy goal, especially if the alternative is cold, 'functional' material culture epitomized by much office furniture.

on the other hand, isn't there something essentially misguided about trying to 'consume' beauty? isn't part of the wonder and mystery of beauty that it has no 'use'?

perhaps we should say that beauty is not 'for' something else in the sense that, qua beauty, it is not the means to some other end. and yet, this need not mean that the only appropriate venue for the experience of beauty is a museum, where one sits and 'does nothing' but appreciate the beauty of something. rather, we can create and appreciate beauty in contexts of consumption and use -such as a meal or a building- while recognizing that the beauty of such things is valuable and wonderful in a way that cannot (or ought not) be seen as merely a means to an end, even if in some way the object itself is a means to an end.

shopping for beauty

most of my recent posts have focused on politics, broadly defined. i now intend to shift gears a bit, and begin a series of reflection that are, in one way or another, about beauty and the beautiful.

shortly before christmas last year, i was walking along michigan avenue in downtown chicago. the street was packed with people doing their christmas shopping, going in and out of the expensive stores along the magnificent mile. the store windows were filled eye-catching product displays. many people carried packages of the things they had purchased.

as i took in this scene, the following thought occurred to me: the stores were full of beautiful things. the things for sale -clothing, jewelry, household items, etc.- were made to be beautiful, pleasing to the eye, well-proportioned, eye-catching. and all of the people crowding the stores wanted to be beautiful, to make themselves and their lives beautiful. and so they were trying to get these beautiful things from the stores, and to bring them close to themselves. they were going take the beautiful things and put them in their homes, in their offices and on their bodies, as if by doing this they might somehow become more beautiful themselves.

what struck me about this attempt to become beautiful is that it involves a kind of confusion, perhaps even a category mistake. the attractiveness of a shirt may be a matter of its physical proportions, or the loveliness of a dress might be a matter of its color. but the beauty of a human being is the beauty of a human soul. and what makes a soul beautiful is not its physical shape or color, just as what makes a symphony beautiful is not a matter of how it looks and what makes an oil painting beautiful is not a matter of the way it sounds. trying to become beautiful by hanging beautiful things on one's body is like trying to become virtuous by putting books about virtue on one's bookshelf.

of course, one might think that physical shape and color are what make a human body beautiful, and that the shoppers on michigan avenue were just trying to get beautiful bodies and not beautiful souls. to some extent, this is probably the case. i think, however, that something more than this was going on, and is typically going on when we buy things for ourselves and for our material environment. moreover, even our attempts to get beautiful bodies -by going to the gym, or eating well, or using any of the innumerable number of lotions now available- seem to be motivated by more than the desire to have a beautiful body. the desire for a beautiful body is somehow connected to a more basic desire to be beautiful people, to have our selves be beautiful, to personally partake of beauty in some deep way. and insofar as our goal is to have beautiful selves or to live beautiful lives, then both shopping and working out (those two symbols of contemporary american culture) seem poor means to this end, because the kind of beauty they can give us is not the beauty proper to a human soul.

"every foreign country is their fatherland, and every fatherland is a foreign country"

on the theme of christian cosmopolitanism, my friend sean sent me the following passage. it is from a work known as the letter to diognetus. it probably dates from the second century, and the author is unknown. it is quite beautiful, and expresses almost exactly what i was trying to capture in speaking of an ethos of christian cosmopolitanism:

For the distinction between Christians and other men is neither in country nor language nor customs. For they do not dwell in cities in some place of their own, nor do they use any strange variety of dialect, nor practice an extraordinary kind of life. This teaching of theirs has not been discovered by the intellect or thought of busy men, nor are they the advocates of any human doctrine as some men are… They dwell in their own fatherlands, but as if sojourners in them; they share all things as citizens, and suffer all things as strangers. Every foreign country is their fatherland, and every fatherland is a foreign country. They marry as all men, they bear children, but they do not expose their offspring. They offer free hospitality, but guard their purity. Their lot is cast “in the flesh,” but they do not live “after the flesh” (2 Cor. 10.3). They pass their time on earth, but they have their citizenship in heaven (Phil. 3.20). They obey the appointed laws, and they surpass the laws in their own lives. They love all men and are persecuted by all men. They are unknown and they are condemned. They are put to death and they gain life. “They are poor and make many rich” (2 Cor. 6.10); they lack all thing and have all things in abundance. They are dishonoured, and are glorified in their dishonour; they are spoken evil of and are justified. “They are abused and give blessing” (1 Cor. 4.12), they are insulted and render honour. When they do good they are buffeted as evildoers, when they are buffeted they rejoice as men who receive life. They are warred upon by the Jews and persecuted by the Greeks, and those who hate them cannot state the cause of their enmity… what the soul is to the body, that the Christians are to the world. The soul is spread through all members of the body, and Christians throughout the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body, but is not of the body, and Christians dwell in the world but are not of the world.

christian cosmopolitanism, part III -two kinds of patriotism

on the eve of the fourth of july, it seems fitting to add another installment to this series of reflection on christian cosmopolitanism.

as the last two posts suggest, my real contrast for cosmopolitanism has not been localism or traditionalism, but patriotism. i have been suggesting the need for a christian cosmopolitanism as an alternative to christian patriotism. but is there anything that can be said in favor of patriotism? or can christian cosmopolitanism and christian patriotism somehow co-exist?

it seems to me that any acceptable account of patriotism must deal with the following problem: one ought always to support the course of action that is just and good. thus, if one's country does what is just and good, then one should support one's country. if, however, one's country does what is unjust or bad, then one should not support one's country. either way, one's ultimate support is for what is just and good, and one's support for one's country is only 'incidental' or derivative of this basic commitment. therefore, when it comes to one's support for one's country,if one's commitments are already in the right place, then there is nothing left for patriotism to do.

one way of getting around this problem and retaining a space for patriotism is to adopt a form of patriotism which advocates loyalty or commitment to one's country and its course of action regardless of what one's country does. such patriotism sees loyalty to country as more basic than support for the just and good course of action -this is the attitude of those who say we must support america no matter what, or support america simply because it is our country and regardless of what it does. this form of patriotism, i think, is quite clearly unacceptable for christians. our most basic loyalty is not to our country but to god and to the gospel, and thus if our country does what is unjust or bad, we cannot support it in this action.

at the same time, however, we can think of patriotism not as unconditional support for one's country, but rather as a matter of special responsibility, and perhaps also special affection, for one's country. on this view, patriotism is not a matter of undying loyalty to one's country, but of special concern and focused attention on one's country. the basic idea is that each of us has certain spheres of influence, and hence spheres of responsibility. for example, i am able to impact things in america in a way that i am not able to impact things in france, because i live in america and not france, i can vote in america but not in france, i speak english but not french, etc. thus, i am responsible for what goes on in america more than i am for what goes on in france. and thus it is right for me to be concerned about america in a way that i am not concerned about france.
along the same lines, it seems proper to have a special affection and fondness for one's own country -such affection seems to correspond naturally to concern, and it is the fitting acknowledgment of the fact that being a citizen of a particular place is a part of who one is.

while i don't have an account of 'christian patriotism' to offer, i think that a form of christian patriotism could be developed. i suggest that any acceptable form of christian patriotism would be along the lines of this second notion of patriotism rather than the first -one that centers on the notions of influence and responsibility rather than unquestioned loyalty. such an account might even compatible with christian cosmopolitanism, if one's focus on one's own country did not preclude (or occlude) one's concern for other countries and cultures, including the desire both to benefit and to learn from countries and places other than one's own.

any acceptable form of christian patriotism will be especially aware of the dangers of idolatry. one of the great ironies of christian patriotism in america is that in the name of giving thanks to god, patriotism itself becomes a form of idolatry. i remember driving across the country in the days after september 11, 2001 and seeing people hanging patriotic banners from bridge overpasses on the interstate. many of these were religious in nature, the most common of course being 'god bless america.' one banner which especially struck me read: 'america forever.' while those who made this banner may have been very well-intentioned, i think that the message says something that we who are christians cannot endorse. first, we know that america will not last forever -the kingdoms of this world will all pass away. second, and more importantly, we should not want america to last forever! america, like all of this world, is full of sin and corruption, and as christians we look for a new heaven and a new earth which will be perfect in a way that america could never compare.

of course it is possible for a cosmopolitanism as well as patriotism to be idolatrous, with the idol of country being replaced by the idol of the world. thus, just as any proper christian patriotism would not make an idol of country, so it is one of the chief distinctives of a christian cosmopolitanism that it does not make an idol of the world.