Aesthetics, Order, and Surprise: A Peek Into Authentic Beauty
Aesthetics and Beauty
One of the issues I personally see in our society at large today is that beauty is primarily thought of on physical aesthetic terms. You know what I mean: all you have to do is open Instagram or TikTok and be greeted by any number of aesthetic kitchens, homes, wardrobes, routines, or lives staring you in the face. Now, don’t get me wrong – there’s nothing wrong with aesthetics in of themselves. In fact, aesthetics are helpful in identifying beauty!
Because I’m a nerd, and I enjoy word definitions, I obviously looked into the definition of aesthetics. As it turns out, according to the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, the word aesthetic can be used as both an adjective and a noun; and different, though related, definitions accompany each. As a noun, aesthetics are “the qualities and ideas in a work of art or literature that relate to beauty and the nature of art.” Aesthetics also happen to be “the branch of philosophy that studies the principles of beauty, especially in art.”¹ As an adjective, the word aesthetic comes with two definitions. The first is as follows: “Connected with beauty and art and the understanding of beautiful things.” Aesthetic also means that something is “made in an artistic way and beautiful to look at.”
As we can see, aesthetics and beauty are highly related. But it’s too easy to make the mistake of looking at beauty through a purely physical, aesthetic lens, when there is a greater depth to beauty that we rob ourselves of when we settle for what we can see. And when we settle only for a physical observation of beauty, we gradually lose something very precious: the depth of impact that beauty is meant to have on our spiritual lives. We begin to think that truth and goodness are worth far more, when in reality, they are all worth the same.
The Transcendentals and the Need for Beauty
The concept of the transcendentals dates back centuries in Christian thought. The transcendentals are essentially different lenses through which we can view God and gain a deeper understanding of Him: God as Truth, God as Goodness, God as Beauty.
Twentieth century theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar had a lot to say on beauty – five volumes worth, in fact. But there’s one quote in particular that hits home the depth and immense power beauty has on our lives:
“Beauty is the word which shall be our first. Beauty is the last thing which the thinking intellect dares to approach since only it dances as an uncontained splendor around the double constellation of the true and the good and their inseparable relation to one another. Beauty is the disinterested one, without which the ancient world refused to understand itself, a word which both imperceptibly and unmistakably has bid farewell to our new world, a world of interests, leaving it to its own avarice and sadness. No longer loved or fostered by religion, beauty is lifted from its face as a mask, and its absence exposes features on that face which threaten to become incomprehensible to man. We no longer dare to believe in beauty, and we make of it a mere appearance in order the more easily to dispose of it. Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance. We can be sure that whoever sneers at her name, as if she were the ornament of a bourgeois past, whether he admits it or not, can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love.”
That last line always gets me: “We can be sure that whoever sneers are her name… can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love.” The truth is that we need beauty. Our souls need beauty, and so do our bodies because we’re body-soul composites and each are important. Yet how do we incorporate authentic beauty into our lives in a way that doesn’t reduce beauty to physical aesthetics, and in a way makes sense for us in our own unique individual life circumstances?
Order and Surprise
Thankfully, it’s not as intimidating as it might seem. We can actually see some identifiable marks of beauty and use those as a guide. In his wonderful book Beauty: What It Is and Why It Matters, theologian John-Mark Miravelle writes that, in the natural world around us that God created, we can find two traits of beauty in particular that can serve as guideposts: order and surprise.²
Order is an easy one to spot. Just look at the world around you! Think of the ordered, cyclical nature of the seasons, or the life of any animal under the sun, or the way water condenses and evaporates. Think of how an oak tree grows from an acorn into a sapling, then into a full-grown tree that produces its own acorns – which then fall to the ground and become oak trees of their own (so long as squirrels or other animals don’t eat them first). Think of how cherry blossoms only bloom at a certain time of year, or snow only falls if it’s a particular temperature. There’s an order to nature that allows us to study it and learn more about the Mind of our Creator.
But there’s also surprise, too. And by surprise, John-Mark Miravelle clarifies that surprise, in this instance, indicates the way that there are some things in nature for which we don’t have an explanation for based on the observations of the naked eye alone. He uses the example of grass being green. Why is grass green? It could just as easily be blue, or purple, or pink. With a microscope, we know all about chlorophyll and the knowledge behind why it’s green. But without a microscope, we can’t discern that answer. There is an element of surprise to beauty.
When I think of order and surprise, I can’t help but think of the way we’re all made uniquely in God’s Image and Likeness. If God is true Beauty, then this means we reflect God’s beauty, and thus will necessarily contain the elements of order and surprise. In some ways, all humans are very similar. Men and women alike share basic body functions: our hearts beat, we possess arms and legs and fingers and toes, our brains send signals to our nervous system. There are, of course, obvious physical differences between men and women, and less obvious differences that we know of through the study of male and female physiology (and those less obvious differences would actually technically fall under the umbrella of surprise, not order). There’s an order to how humans are made, and that order is what allows us to identify when something’s gone wrong: colds, flus, broken bones, tumors, cancer, chronic illness, heart disease, nerve damage.
But there’s also surprise. I have brown hair with natural highlights that change based on how much sun exposure I’ve had. One of my sisters was born with a head of black hair; the other with blonde curls. One of my brothers really surprised us by having red hair. My dad is very tall; my grandma is very short. My feet are two sizes bigger than my mom’s, and one of my cousins has one ear that’s pointed like an elf’s ear. I’ve never been athletic and neither has my husband been, but we both love books. In contrast, my aforementioned red-headed brother isn’t a fan of reading, but he’s wildly athletic. I have two friends who love Excel spreadsheets and have gifts for administration, my grandmother-in-law was a florist and has a wonderful talent for arranging flowers, and I had a childhood friend with a condition called chromesthesia, which sounds terrifying but just means she can see colors when she hears music. One of my sisters can blow an audience away with how well she can play the French horn, while I sound like a dying duck if I try to play it. My uncle has a special ability to find the very best restaurants on the first try wherever he goes in the world. I have an aunt whose beautiful cross-stitch works grace the homes of many family members, including my own. Many a parish priest at my family’s church has looked forward to Easter because he knows a pan of my grandma’s orange rolls are coming his way.
We’re all made in God’s Image and Likeness, and this means we all contain order and surprise. Implications of what this means for us abound, but one of my favorite ones is that you and I can’t try to put ourselves into boxes where we don’t fit without sacrificing who God made us to be.
For now, I’ll leave you with that thought. However, I promise my next blog post will dive into this some more, and I’ll share some tips and ideas on incorporating beauty into your life in a way that not only works for you, but is good for you, both in body and in soul.
Dietrich von Hildebrand, one of the greatest philosophers in the twentieth century who was also a devout Catholic, devoted some of his last works to this branch of philosophy, with two full volumes on the topic that are at once highly dense, extremely informative, and very thought-provoking.
If you want a great introductory read into the theology of beauty, I highly recommend Beauty: What It Is and Why It Matters by John-Mark Miravelle.
