Value, Beauty, and Professor Perry

Abstract

THE THOMIST A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY EDITORs: THE DoMINICAN FATHERS oF THE PROVINCE oF ST. JosEPH Publishers: Sheed & Ward, Inc., New York City VoL. IV JANUARY, 1!142 No.1 VALUE, BEAUTY, Al\'D PROFESSOR PERRY LL philosophy begins-or should begin-with the obvious but unfathomably profound statement that there is something which is what it is. That " something" is the datum of all realistic, that is to say of aU true, metaphysics . Descartes and his ever more bewildered and wavering followers, from Locke and Berkeley to Hume and Kant and so on to Dewey and Bertrand Russell, assume too much at the very beginning when they declare that this " something" is a thought or mental event. Soon after a child first opens his as yet uncorrupted eyes he comes to a realization of that·" something " which will some day lead him, if he does not become a self-indulgent sophist, to the discovery of that other and infinite "Something" which is God. This tiny sage will become aware of the actually infinite "Something" by becoming aware of himself as perceiving potentially infinite, or indefinitely finite, "somethings" which fringe on mystery. Thus, after he has discovered beings in general, he discovers his "I " long before he knows the word for it, an " I " which he verifies continually during his waking hours and sooner or later during some of his 1 HERBERT ELLSWORTH CORY sleeping hours, through his growing memory, that treasurehouse of wonder. Of such an "I" he is absolutely certain, unless in due time he becomes a skeptic who in practice denies his own teaching that the " something" which he observes cannot be both itself and something else at the same time and under the same aspect. Any apparent departure from this experience will make him start and stare and look for what he will later call a "cause" which he will always find necessary to explain whatever does not completely explain itself. In due time he will find out, unless he allows himself to be led astray by men like Kant and William James, that the only "something " which adequately explains itself and so needs no cause is the "Something" who once said to Moses, " I am who am." Until this infant discovers Him" who is," however, he suffers acutely from that restlessness which Saint Augustine describes so eloquently in the first paragraph of his Confessions. The babe wants something, and he wants it the more because he is far from certain just what he wants. In our distracted pagan era he will flounder from the bassinet to the crematory without ever knowing what he really wants-unless he accepts, revelation . He is restless; he wants something. And just as "something " is the datum of all speculative philosophy, that is to say, of metaphysics (both ontology and epistemology) this " act of wanting" is the datum of all practical philosophy, that is, of axiology, or general theory of value, which includes both ethics, the science of the righteous or happy life, and aesthetics, the science of the meaning of beauty and its transcendental significance throughout and around the universe. I Many modern philosophers have written about this wanting or valuing as if it were somehow essentially or basically in conflict with facts, as if it could not validly hope for a real object with which to come into vital union or even, with more detachment , to contemplate. George Santayana, for instance, turns with contempt from the world of reality which seems to him to be mere matter in meaningless fl.ux'to a pseudo-spiritual VALUE, BEAUTY, AND PROFESSOR PERRY world of shadowy thoughts or values which are unreal but, to his urbanely disillusioned mind, charmingly untainted in their very unreality. But the overwhelming majority of pure-hearted children of all ages and the few adults who are not merely learned but wise, have always recognized .that acts of valuing are facts and that they always, at least ultimately, refer to other facts which are equally real. Everyday folk and the greatest of the philosophers have always found themselves impelled to associate somehow value with both object-beings and desire-beings (appetitions, interests ). The Scholastic...