When I told my elderly mother that I was writing a column about beauty, she asked me: “Are you for it or against it?” She instantly thought of “beauty” as what goes on at the “beauty parlor.” But she wasn’t that far off the mark when she asked me whether I am for or against. Consider the phrase: “Beauty will save the world.” Will it?

When the offhand slogan pops up in conversation, media or religious circles, I find it is instantaneously met with unanimous, enthusiastic head-nodding. I suspect some might think it quotes the Bible or a saint. Neither. It is from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel, “The Idiot.” The actual words of Prince Myshkin are: “I believe the world will be saved by beauty.” Obviously, he didn’t mean the beauty parlor, but that profound “property of being” that is one of the three (or four) “transcendentals”: (unity), truth, goodness, beauty. Who formulated them? The ancient Greek philosophers (in various elucidations), and they have come to us through St. Albert the Great and his pupil, St. Thomas Aquinas. Interestingly enough, “beauty” is a later addition.

Now. Would you consider yourself primarily a seeker/follower of truth, goodness or beauty? This might sound like a strange question, because the transcendentals come together as a whole. Where there is truth, there is also goodness and beauty. Where there is goodness, there is truth and beauty, etc. But each of us tends to be drawn by one of these more than the others, or at least, we are attracted by them in a particular order. I must confess that I am not firstly a follower of the beautiful, and so I have always chaffed at the assertion: “Beauty will save the world.”

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Don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against beauty. That would be perverse. I just don’t get the hype. I’m with a different prince, “The Little Prince,” where the fox in that story says: “What is essential is not seen with the eye.” Of course, true beauty is not just visual or sensory. But still. Our media-saturated world puts so much stock in aesthetics, presentation and appearances, that I fear this superficial understanding of beauty has rubbed off on me. To me, truth and goodness are necessary and somewhat pragmatic. I can use truth and goodness. What am I supposed to do with beauty? Ah. Isn’t that the whole point? Beauty can’t be used. It is “use-less.” And that makes me uncomfortable. As Emerson said: “Beauty is its own excuse for being.” 

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There is, among this present “beauty trend,” shall we say, something called the Via Pulchritudinis or “Way of Beauty.” I love that in the excerpts from the Pontifical Council for Culture’s 2006 Plenary Assembly document, the emphasis is on the fact that God Himself is Beauty.

“Beginning with the simple experience of meeting with beauty, the Via Pulchritudinis can open the pathway for the search for God, and dispose the heart and spirit to meet Christ, who is the Beauty of Holiness Incarnate, offered by God to men for their salvation. It invites contemporary Augustines…to see through perceptible beauty to Eternal Beauty, and with fervour discover Holy God, the author of all beauty.”

“It is necessary to clarify just what is the Via Pulchritudinis…. Which is the beauty that favours the handing on of the Faith by its capacity to touch people's hearts, to express the mystery of God and of the human person, to be an authentic ‘bridge,’ an open space for a pathway for the men and women of our times who already know beauty…and help them meet the beauty of the Gospel of Christ?”

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But what happens when people are dazzled by the beauty of God, and then find out that He is the Suffering Servant, the Pierced One, and that He calls us to the same? What happens when they find out that the Via Pulchritudinis is the Via Dolorosa? Will they stay or will they turn away to a facile, inferior beauty? Let us trust that “when I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me,” and let us trust that, like ourselves, our fellow travelers aren’t willing to settle for less, no matter the cost of beauty.

So then, will beauty save the world? He already did.