Post 152.
This week, I read the chapter, Beauty, in the 1952 edition of Brittanica’s Syntopicon, a collection designed by Mortimer Adler and Robert Hutchins at the University of Chicago for a collection called “The Great Books of the Western World.” The idea of a syntopicon, or a collection of topics, is distinctive to Brittanica’s project, though consistent with the ideas of encyclopedias and dictionaries, and is similar with more modern keywords projects, such as books by Raymond Williams, Cary Nelson, Stephen Watt, Evelyn Fox Keller and Elisabeth Lloyd in disciplines like culture, higher education, and evolutionary biology. The syntopicon offers a broad introduction of 100 keywords that are central to Western thought, from the perspective of Western philosophy and literature. Any criticisms more recent scholars pose to eurocentric and androcentric scholarly writing will necessarily be relevant to the Syntopicon, and with that in mind, Syntopicon entries can provide a base understanding of one intellectual tradition’s established understanding of a keyword—in this case, beauty.
Beauty is discussed with two other keywords, truth and goodness, but where truth and goodness are most often argued as being objective, beauty is widely, though not univocally, regarded as subjective in the Western intellectual tradition. Some authors, such as William James, have argued for an objective understanding of beauty, while others, such as Immanuel Kant, suggest beauty is a subjective but universal concept. Truth, goodness and beauty together make up the essential transcendentals of the Western tradition. As such, truth, goodness and beauty transcend the material world—you cannot touch or smell or hear truth itself, goodness itself, or beauty itself, but you are able to use these transcendentals as standards by which to judge true things, good things, and beautiful things as true, good, or beautiful. Plato would suggest these are primary ideas that transcend material reality. This idea can be found throughout Western history.
Daniel J. Shevock
Link to the image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Great_Books.jpg
This week, I read the chapter, Beauty, in the 1952 edition of Brittanica’s Syntopicon, a collection designed by Mortimer Adler and Robert Hutchins at the University of Chicago for a collection called “The Great Books of the Western World.” The idea of a syntopicon, or a collection of topics, is distinctive to Brittanica’s project, though consistent with the ideas of encyclopedias and dictionaries, and is similar with more modern keywords projects, such as books by Raymond Williams, Cary Nelson, Stephen Watt, Evelyn Fox Keller and Elisabeth Lloyd in disciplines like culture, higher education, and evolutionary biology. The syntopicon offers a broad introduction of 100 keywords that are central to Western thought, from the perspective of Western philosophy and literature. Any criticisms more recent scholars pose to eurocentric and androcentric scholarly writing will necessarily be relevant to the Syntopicon, and with that in mind, Syntopicon entries can provide a base understanding of one intellectual tradition’s established understanding of a keyword—in this case, beauty.
Beauty is discussed with two other keywords, truth and goodness, but where truth and goodness are most often argued as being objective, beauty is widely, though not univocally, regarded as subjective in the Western intellectual tradition. Some authors, such as William James, have argued for an objective understanding of beauty, while others, such as Immanuel Kant, suggest beauty is a subjective but universal concept. Truth, goodness and beauty together make up the essential transcendentals of the Western tradition. As such, truth, goodness and beauty transcend the material world—you cannot touch or smell or hear truth itself, goodness itself, or beauty itself, but you are able to use these transcendentals as standards by which to judge true things, good things, and beautiful things as true, good, or beautiful. Plato would suggest these are primary ideas that transcend material reality. This idea can be found throughout Western history.
Daniel J. Shevock
Link to the image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Great_Books.jpg
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