Truth, Goodness, Beauty: The Next Generation
A generative view
Though Plato and Aristotle thought they were describing a transcendental truth, we can appreciate the trio of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty that occupied them. Let me present this trio instead as a generative view that can be stepped into.
Living in Truth: being present to the way things are and the available context. This is not propositional or eternal truth, but the transient truth of the here-and-now. This is the indispensable foundation for Living from Goodness.
Living from Goodness: being present to the way the play of virtues illuminates the situation. Virtues are the many colors of goodness, which cannot be reduced to a single axis. It serves little purpose to be present to virtues if they are not illuminating the actual situation. That is why truth is a prerequisite for goodness. Acting heroically, for example, in response to a mind-made fantasy of what the situation is, fails to engage with what is actually happening, and if such action benefits the situation, will only do so accidentally.
The situation illuminated by virtues is the foundation for Beauty.
The illumination of virtues may at times clearly reveal the appropriate interaction with the situation. But what if it does not? What if the illumination of virtues shows uncomfortable trade-offs, that doing the right thing under one light is the wrong thing in another, and vice versa?
Living as Beauty: moving toward the most appealing vision of the future arising from truth illuminated by goodness. This means assuming responsibility for the uncomfortable trade-offs that will never be resolved of their own accord. This is beauty beyond goodness, not in place of it. Thus, this beauty will be good and truthful, because those are the successive foundations upon which it arises.
This can all happen in a flash, as a fusion. The purpose of separating them here is not to suggest a laborious stepwise progression, but to render visible our limitations.
Limitations in truth are limitations of contact with what is actually happening, including limitations in presence to context. There will always be limitations here.
Limitations in goodness are limitations in acquaintance with the variety of virtues. As there are innumerable virtues, and each may be known bodily with greater or lesser intensity, there will always be limitations here.
Limitations in beauty are limitations of imaginative power and an underdeveloped aesthetic sense. As both of these develop over a lifetime, there will always be limitations here.
Let these aspects be material for spontaneous reflection, and over time, limitations fade asymptotically.