Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

We may feel that we have to fight visceral outbursts of rage or swooning. But I’d suggest instead that we should rest a while in those strong emotions that aesthetics can evoke. These, too, are part of us. In fact, they are probably more like the real us than anything else that we may wish to project of ourselves onto the world.

Let me put all of this another way — if we can discern what are, genuinely, our true pleasures and our true fears and dislikes, then we can start to see our meanings and purposes in a clearer light. Mr. Burke was all about the shoulders. What are we all about? It’s worth finding out — finding, if possible, where our true pleasures lie.

So, while beauty may be the hardest thing to define, it’s also the thing that moves us the most. As such, I think that this apprehension of beauty is a bigger clue to what life is about than either goodness or truth. Beauty — which seems the least definable — also seems the most real. So, perhaps there is no such thing as beauty in the abstract sense. Maybe there is just our response to certain things — the experience of beauty is real, but beauty itself is not.

The response to beauty is not necessarily totally pleasurable. We are not completely happy in the face of beauty — we might experience a range of emotions and not for any obvious reasons. There is a sense in which a beautiful object or experience is not an enclosed sentiment. There is the possibility of danger, unpredictability and chaos lurking on the

133