About a month ago I posted a video with the title “Beauty and the Ontological Argument”, without an accompanying article. At the time, I was a little exhausted after a long week at work, and beauty is a very difficult, if not impossible, subject to write, not to mention I’m not good at words to begin with, but I’ll try to complete what I started.
A Glimpse of the Transcendent
As I was watching the video, my mind wandered far and wide, to distant land and distant time. I thought of the band of musicians on Titanic who continued playing music while the ship was sinking [1]; I thought of Archimedes who remained engrossed in geometry when his home city Syracuse had been sacked by Romans, and a soldier was about to kill him [2]; I thought of the priests in Rome who continued offering sacrifices in the temple while they were being cut down by the soldiers of an invading army.
My stream of consciousness had a central theme: transcendence. There are moments in life, such as moments of intense aesthetic experience, moments of crisis, and even moments before death, when one catches a glimpse of that which transcends our life, that which we cherish more than our own life precisely because it makes our life meaningful, and worth living — to borrow the words of T.S.Eliot, because it distinguishes us as Homo sapiens, capable of contemplating and partaking beauty, truth and love.
For this reason, I tend to think that the best art, and for that matter the best science, is transcendent. To paraphrase C.E.M.Joad, there is no sunset, no work of art, so beautiful that it does not waken the vision of a greater beauty. The best artists and the best scientists are those who never draw attention to themselves or their own works, at least not purposely, but through their life and works they open the window, so to speak, to the transcendent, and, by doing so, inspire others to pursue the transcendent.
A Great Idea vs the Truth
Life is not an easy matter…. You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.
― Leon Trotsky, Diary in Exile
I was first introduced to this quote by a friend of mine. He is a friend of the family, and has always treated me like a big brother. During one of the most difficult periods of my life, he opened his apartment to me to help me conduct job search. There were inspirational quotes all over the walls of his apartment, and this one left a lasting impression on me.
It is perhaps fitting to mark the 201st anniversary of Karl Marx’s birthday with this quote by a Marxist. It is also a little ironic, come to think of it, that a Marxist speaks so eloquently about transcendence, which seems incompatible with materialism.
There are important differences between a great idea and transcendent truth.
For starters, the former is subjective whereas the latter is objective. A false idea, not matter how great it may seem at first, will fail to materialize. However, there may yet be a kernel of truth in the false idea, which provides the latter the great power to rouse people to heroic acts. We need not throw out the baby with the bath water.
Transcendence, by definition, does not originate with man, but is beyond man. In other words, the ontological basis of transcendence is greater than man. Hence the Ontological Argument. It takes a little self-knowledge and humility to acknowledge that truth, beauty and goodness are an objective reality independent of man, who nevertheless has the innate capacity to pursue, comprehend and participate in that transcendent reality.
Notes:
- ^1. “Titanic Dramatic Moment.” YouTube. December 25, 2017. Accessed May 06, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhqabq-tKXQ.
- ^2. Plutarch, “The Life of Marcellus.” Accessed May 06, 2019. http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Marcellus*.html.
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