So I have been extremely negligent in posting anything, partly due to the fact that I just finished an entire philosophy class in 8 days. My brain has been fried for a couple weeks and I'm just getting back into some reading, in the meantime, here is one of the papers I wrote for this class on Aesthetics, for any Provers out there, this is my answer to the debate about sweat-pants.
Introduction
The true, the good, and the
beautiful, these are the holy triumvirate of descriptors that thinkers have
applied to the Divine through the ages. As St. John’s gospel so poetically puts
it, the Logos – the truth or order of the cosmos – became flesh and dwelt among
us, making disciples and commissioning those disciples to make disciples of all
nations. Philosophers have long connected the ideas of Truth and Beauty, and it
is part of the Christian confession to say that these things have their ultimate
reality and grounding in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
It is the intent of this paper to
tease out the implications of being a disciple of – as the song writer puts it
– the Beautiful One. My understanding of
discipleship is based on the ancient Jewish custom of discipleship in which a
young man, after completing his schooling would beg a rabbi to accept him as
his disciple. From that moment on the disciple lived, breathed, and slept, the
teachings of his rabbi. The goal was, that at some point, the disciple would
become so much akin to the rabbi that the rabbi would release the disciple from
service because there was no more that he could teach, and the disciple would
in turn, become a rabbi in his own right. Now a Christian confesses that he or
she has been chosen by the rabbi, and there will be no release on the rabbi’s part;
but the salient feature of discipleship remains, the literal transformation of
the disciple to be remade in the rabbi’s image. In the case of the Christian,
that means a remaking in the image of the Beautiful. I will argue that the
Christian duty to beauty continues to provide a strong imperative to subvert
the current prevalent trend of the “Sweat-pant Aesthetic” that finds its roots
in pragmatism. During Christendom, the Church led the way in philosophy,
literature, science, music, visual arts, and architecture. Now, Christianity is
known for second rate art and a general lack of ‘high culture’. It is my
assertion that as disciples of the Beautiful One, it is our duty to create and
facilitate all forms of beauty.
Beauty, the Christian Duty
Arguably the central tenant of
Christianity is love. We are to love others, love ourselves and love God. Love
is “the more excellent way” (1 Cor. 12:31). Now, given that Love is central to
the Christian faith, we can turn to the teachings of (who else?) Plato in his
work, the Symposium, for a look at
the connection between love and beauty. Plato, through the voice
of Diotima, argues that we ought to, and often naturally do love particular
beautiful forms. The nature of love is such that if we love a particular
beautiful form, we should love all beautiful forms and so on, love in the
universal increases through the experience of loving the particular.
So Christians, the lives of whom are
to be characterized by love, should naturally love beauty. We are also
followers of the one in whom all things have their grounding; that is Christ,
the source of all beauty. Traditionally, the church understood the necessary
connection to the love of beauty and Christian art and architecture reflected
that. Cathedrals, those beautiful sacrifices of praise, were built for the sake
of the transcendent beauty of these places that forces an awareness of the
divine; the experience of such places elevates the human experience from the
mire of life to a fleeting image of heaven. Scripture itself exhorts the
faithful believer to appreciate the Beautiful. Philippians 4:8(NRSV) says “Finally, beloved, whatever is true,
whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is
anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” There was a time when the
Church valued Beauty, maybe even to the point of idolatry, unfortunately the
response was not a re-evaluation, but an adoption of the secular ugliness I
have termed, the ‘Sweat-pant Aesthetic”.
The Sweat-pant Aesthetic
By this time, one may be wondering
what this ‘Sweat-pant Aesthetic’ is that I keep making constant reference to.
Essentially it is the same function-first pragmatism that Roger Scruton rails
against in his film, Why Beauty Matters. The issue was first
brought to my attention in the form of an on-going debate amongst Providence
students regarding the social obligation of adhering to a certain standard of
dress. The main point of contention in this debate is the wearing of sweat-pants
in public situations. Now, it is not my project to resolve this debate, but,
following the worldview evaluation model as set forth by Pearcey, I wish to
expose the pragmatic attitude towards beauty inherent in this debate, that is
anathema to the Christian calling.
The
Modern Art movement of the past century has given rise to a rather peculiar
trend in the art world. Art has become pragmatically true, (in the Rortyan
sense, ‘what your peers will let you get away with’) and the artist has been
reduced to a marketer, convincing in brazen tones that a can of shit or a
broken urinal is in fact art. The artist, rather than trying to create art for
the sake of beauty, points to the ugliness of reality and declares, “This is
art!” This trend allows the consumer to feel “more at ease within the world
they are given.”
No longer does art need to transcend the everyday, to make the world more
beautiful, the shock value of the advertisement is all that is left.
In
other areas of aesthetic consideration, such as architecture, interior design,
landscaping, and fashion, it is functionality that trumps beauty.“Our consumer society puts
usefulness first and beauty is no better than a side-effect.” Consumerism thrives on
this functional aesthetic where concepts of real beauty are meaningless. “If people decide what is beautiful based only on
opinion, then fashion can be changed quickly. Quick changes in fashion lead to
spending. . . and spending leads to profit.”
Pragmatism has been expressed as the salient
feature of American philosophical thought.
It is the double edged sword that has made America great and also brought about
the aesthetic decay that is now so prevalent. Beauty has been replaced by the
category of practicality, hence the “Sweat-pant Aesthetic”. The logic is,
clothing is necessary, sweat-pants are comfortable, good enough! But is it good
enough? Is functionality truly more important than fashionality? To this
question we now turn.
A Critique of the ‘Sweat-pant Aesthetic’
“Put
usefulness first and you lose it, put beauty first and what you do will be
useful forever.”
This is the conclusion which Roger Scruton draws near the end of his
documentary on Beauty. The logic is simple, if something is made solely for its
function, be it a building or clothing or whatever, it will not be valued for
long, and soon will be made so ugly that even its original functionality is
removed. Put more simply, people will pay to upkeep a castle long after they
have written off a concrete apartment block, designer suits will be taken care
of longer than a pair of sports shorts. Functionality paired with beauty would
seem to increase the longevity of an item’s functionality. So it is apparent
from a purely economic standpoint, that attention to beauty is a worthy
endeavour. But the economic value of beauty in no way implies a Christian duty
to the preservation of this esteemed value.
The
Christian duty to the Beautiful primarily begins with the imperative to love
one another.
The flippant comment,
‘I don’t care how I look’ is not a mark of humility but a lack of love. Others
are obliged to look at the person who doesn’t care, and thereby he or she is
inflicting psychic pain on them. For love’s sake I will dress in a manner that
signals my love and respect for those around me. My freedom to dress as I
choose must always be conditioned by my love for others. Love is concerned for
the other (not the self) in all matters related to personal appearance and
lifestyle.
The current
devotion to pragmatism over beauty is the functional equivalent of saying, “I
don’t care how I look”. It is the same “tongues-out” phenomena prevalent in
modern art that Scruton is so contemptuous of. There is nothing loving in the
artist whose creations are meant to shock, revolt, and disgust. This is being
purposefully unloving, and thus profoundly anti-Christian.
The
ugly cubic architecture of the 20th century, and the function first
style that promotes the wearing of sweat-pants as acceptable and commendable,
is also profoundly unloving in the way in which it conceives of the other. In the
first case of architecture, human life is degraded to a column on a spread
sheet that has a certain cost attached to it – basic need = shelter, therefore
this squalid apartment block should do the trick. The second case – that of
fashion – proclaims that the comfort and preference of the individual trumps
the duty to the ‘other’ which is essential in the living out of community.
Now
the Church, especially in the Evangelical tradition has largely adopted the
pragmatism that has banished any aesthetic consideration from the popular
conscience. Evangelicals are so concerned with the salvation of souls from
damnation that they often adopt a “whatever works” policy to fill their
churches and empty hell. This approach to evangelism is profoundly unloving as
it reduces the significance of human life to mere numbers of souls saved from
destruction.
The
Reformation rightly spoke out against the excesses that existed in the Church,
in the Middle Ages, Beauty had become an idol, so some choices that the
Protestant movement made can be forgiven for their reactionary nature. But a
shift came with the advent of the “tent-meeting” style evangelism of the 19th
and early 20th centuries where the thought surfaced that the message
of salvation was the sum total of discipleship and establishing the kingdom of
God. This led to the
construction of churches that could serve as a platform to proclaim the gospel
by whatever means necessary. My own church’s sanctuary for years could also be
used as a gymnasium and even when a proper sanctuary was built, it was
purposely built to be a multi-functional facility, stained-glass windows were
sacrificed in the name of darkness for the projector. A quick trip to a few
evangelical churches will demonstrate the type of aesthetic compromise of which
I speak.
The
cathedrals of Europe on the other hand – built in another age, one that still
valued beauty and saw the creation of beautiful things as fitting praise to God
– are breath-taking. While the church building I was raised up in has almost
outlived its usefulness, cathedrals that were built a thousand years ago are
still functioning as places of worship in all of their beauty and splendour. While
across Europe churches are struggling to stay open, the cathedral service
attendance is up 20% in recent years. People seem to still be
drawn to the transcendent beauty of these services. This natural tendency that
is betrayed by sociological data should provide a hint, that while the official
rule is pragmatism, the human soul intuitively knows that truth resides
somewhere in the realm of the Beautiful.
Conclusion
Christians, as disciples of the
Beautiful One, and guided in their lifestyle by an ethic of love should be champions
of the cause of Beauty. A life lived in love should transform the way in which
we see other people so that we act in a more beautiful way towards them.
Greater intentionality will necessary be taken in the choices of wardrobe,
architecture, and the creation of art. Under the ethic of Love, no more will
the desires of the self reign supreme, and the need to shock and outrage will
be removed from the arts. Even the Evangelical church should be able to see
that, per our discussions on beauty prolonging function, attention to beauty in
construction will prolong function and, from a purely economic standpoint, save
more souls. The Christian has a profound duty to the creation and preservation
of all things beautiful. For in loving these things, we learn to love more
fully, and thus obey the mandate to love that Christ lays out as the sum of the
Law and Prophets.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bailey, Kenneth
E. Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes: Cultural Studies in 1 Corinthians.
Downers Grove, Ill: IVP Academic, 2011.
Pearcey, Nancy. Saving
Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and
Meaning. Nashville: B&H Publishing
Group, 2010.
Plato. Symposium. In Aesthetics: A Comprehensive Anthology, edited by Steven Cahn and
Aaron Meskin. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008. Originally published in
Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff,
trans., Symposium (Indianapolis, IN,
and Cambridge, MA: Hackett Publishing, 1989).
