What is the relationship between beauty and truth, as well as between beauty and the good? We know from scholastic philosophy that beauty, together with one, being, good, and truth are transcendentals such that they are interchangeable. So what is beautiful is truth, is good, is being, is one.
However, thought is concrete. Can a concrete way of thinking also be metaphysical? If being is one of the transcendentals, the Philippine languages have no perfect translation for being.1 Likewise, being is not the main concern of Filipino thought.2 Is kagandahan (beauty) also interchangeable with the other transcendentals in Filipino thought? What are the educational and pastoral applications of beauty?
We said elsewhere that aesthetics has two views on beauty: beauty as dualistic and beauty as non-dualistic.3 Beauty as dualistic stems from individualism. Western art, which in general stresses the individual, has man as the focus of its art. We said "in general" because there are also Western philosophers who espouse the non-dualistic view. This is not the case of Oriental art (such as Chinese paintings) where man is just part of the picture. The Filipino shares the non-dualistic way of looking at beauty, wherein he and the object ideally become one.
This chapter is limited to the connection: (1) between beauty and truth, and (2) between beauty and the good.
BEAUTY AND TRUTH
Although the Filipino thinks concretely, he reaches the abstract through intuition and induction.4 He arrives at the abstract by using the poetic or the beautiful.
The use of the poetic has two purposes. As explained in Chapter III, one purpose is for diplomacy. For example someone who likes another's T-shirt may hint: "Mayroon bang kapatid iyan?" (Has it a brother/sister?). It means, can I have one like that? The diplomatic way of saying no is, "Ulilang lubos ito" (it is a complete orphan). Through this negative answer, which is said in a metaphorical way, no one is slighted. In Philippine thinking, one does not confront. The way of metaphors serves a diplomatic function. That is one reason why courtship or winning a girl's hand through the poetic is a common phenomenon in the rural Philippines.
Aside from the diplomatic, the Filipino uses the poetic in arriving at the abstract truth. Chapter III has illustrated how people use poetic metaphors in debates (balatagasan) and poetic proverbs for settling problems and in counseling.
How reliable is this poetic approach to truth? Is it inferior to the cold, logical way of syllogisms which characterizes Western thought? Decision makers usually exclude poets and artists from serious deliberation, poetry seems to cater more to the heart than to the head, but Maritain and Heidegger claim that the poetic approach is as valid as cold, cerebral logic.
Maritain on Beauty
J. Maritain, from his Thomistic background, claims that the poet can arrive at the truth through intuition. The word "unconscious" has two nuances: the spiritual and the Freudian. The spiritual unconscious (also called the preconscious, musical unconscious) is "of the spirit in its living strings", while the Freudian unconscious (also called the automatic or deaf unconscious) is that "of blood and flesh, instincts, tendencies, complexes, repressed images and desires, traumatic memories, as constituting a closed or autonomous dynamic whole."5
The preconscious or spiritual unconscious is the domain of contemplation, of mystical experience "in which supreme intellectual concentration is attained by means of the void, and through the abolition of any exercise of conceptual and discursive reason."6 Hence reason has no monopoly of truth because the preconscious can also attain it.7 "There can exist unconscious acts of thought and unconscious ideas."8
The preconscious is the reason why poets, who are enamored of beauty, can arrive at profound truth.
Poetry is the fruit neither of the intellect alone, nor of imagination alone. Nay more, it proceeds from the totality of man, imagination, intellect, love, desire, instinct, blood and spirit together. And the first obligation of the poet is to consent to be brought back to the hidden place, near the center of the soul, where this totality exists in the state of a creative source.9
The artist (or poet) knows through inclination or "connaturality."10 An alcoholic professor may know the meaning of sobriety or temperance; a teetotaler knows the same through living it. An academic theologian living in his comfortable ivory tower may know the meaning of poverty, but the beggar who lives it grasps it better. Therefore knowledge through connaturality comes "by means of emotion."11 This emotion, however, is "spiritualized emotion that poetic intuition . . . is born in the unconscious of the spirit."12 As such this intuition is creative.13
Thus William Blake's poetic intuitions in his Auguries of Innocence can speak volumes in a few lines: "To see a World in a Grain of Sand,/And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,/Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,/And Eternity in an hour."
Heidegger and the Poetic
What Maritain said about the logicality of artistic perception finds an echo in Martin Heidegger. Here we shall attend only to his Poetry, Language, Thought.14
The book is actually not on art nor on aesthetics. Heidegger goes to the Greek etymology, aisthesis, that is, "sensuous apprehension in the wide sense" or "apprehension experience" as in aesthetic experience.15 As such Heidegger goes back to the "fundamental thinking about the constitutive role that the poetic has in human life."16
Beauty is inseparable from truth.
Truth is the unconcealedness of that which is as something that is. Truth is the truth of Being. Beauty does not occur alongside and apart from this truth. When truth sets itself into the work, it appears. Appearanceas this being of truth in the work and as workis beauty. Thus the beautiful belongs to the advent of truth, truth's taking of its place.17
Truth and beauty brings us to the area of poetry and language. Heidegger takes poetry in the "broad sense" and in its "intimate unity of being with language and word."18
Language itself is poetry in the essential sense. . . . Language is not poetry because it is the primal poesy; rather, poesy takes place in language because language preserves the original language of poetry.19
For Heidegger "everyday language is a forgotten and therefore used-up poem, from which there hardly resounds a call any longer."20 For him "pure prose . . . is as poetic and hence as rare as poetry."21 Thus, as a poet, he writes about the relationship between singing, thinking, poetry, being and truth:
Singing and thinking are the stems
neighbor to poetry.
They grow out of Being and reach into
its truth.22
He writes in another poem: "poetry that thinks is in truth / the topology of Being."23
In short, both Maritain and Heidegger show the affinity between beauty and truth.
BEAUTY AND GOOD
In Philippine languages, beauty has many synonyms. For example, words to describe feminine beauty abound.24 For the sake of simplification, let us stick to `ganda' (beautiful) and its antonym, `pangit' (ugly).
Ganda
In Cebuano Visayan, `ayo' (good) can sometimes mean beautiful as in `maayo nga bata' or `maayong bata ang iyan asawa' (he has a beautiful wife). The connection between the beautiful and the good shows up in usages like `maayo/guwapo siyang muduwa ug basketball' (he plays well/beautifully basketball).
In Tagalog, the beautiful is sometimes synonymous with the good. For instance, `good morning' is `magandang umaga', literally, beautiful morning. Likewise, `Good News' is `Magandang Balita', literally, beautiful news. `Kabutihang loob' (good will) is the same as `kagandahang loob' (literally, beautiful will).
In Ilocano, imbag or naimbag has a wide variety of nuances. It can mean, "good: kind, benign, well-disposed, indulgent, benevolent, gracious, friendly; well-behaved, decorous; honorable, reputable, respectable, estimable; capable, commendable, excellent, skillful, efficient, able, competent, expert, trained; enjoyable, pleasurable, agreeable, pleasant, gratifying, pleasing; profitable; sound, right; suitable, satisfactory, sufficient; virtuous, upright, righteous; proper, fit, becoming; salutary, favorable, beneficial, fortunate, helpful, auspicious."25 This variety of nuances extends from the aesthetic (as in enjoyable, pleasurable, pleasant) to the ethical (as in kind, benign, etc.).
The nearest equivalent of `imbag' is `sarap.' `Imbag' appears in expressions like `naimbag a damag' (good news), `naimbag nga bigat' (good morning), `naimbag nga aldaw' (good day), `naimbag nga rabii' (good evening).
`Imbag' is different from `sayaat' which again has a variety of nuances: "good, pretty, beautiful, handsome, comely, graceful, charming, elegant, becoming, gracious, decorous, fit, fitting, seemly, appropriate, proper, suitable."26 It is used in expressions like `nasayaat nga ina' (good mother), `nasayaat nga anak' (good child), nasayaat nga aramid' (good deed), `nasayaat nga biag' (good life).
Beauty in `imbag' and in `sayaat' seem to be more in the realm of virtue as in `utang a naimbag a nakem' (gratitude), `naimbag/nasayaat a panagnaknakem' (kindness, generosity). On the other hand, beauty as `napintas' seems to be in the physical as in `napintas nga balasang' (beautiful girl), `napintas nga bado' (beautiful dress), `napintas a sabong' (beautiful flower).
Pangit
The connection between beauty and the moral can also be seen from its antonym, ugly. Examples in Cebuano Visayan, Tagalog, and Ilocano will show this linkage.
In Cebuano Visayan, `ngil-ad' is not only ugly, but also can connote bad or evil. In `ngil-ad nga dagway' (ugly face), the non-esthetic sense is obvious. In the sentence `ngil-ad ug dungog ang usa ka hustis' (a nightclub hostess has a bad reputation), `ngil-ad' is used in the immoral sense. `Ngil-ad' can mean `daotan' (evil, bad) as used in the Lord's prayer, `deliver us from evil' which is rendered as `luwasa kami sa dautan'.
In Tagalog `pangit' is not only physical as in `pangit na mukha' (ugly face); it also connotes the morally ugly, that is, evil or bad. For instance, `pangit na isipan' (ugly thought); `pangit na ugali' (undesirable habit) is the same as `hindi magandang ugali.' Other examples are `pangit na pamumuhay' (ugly, undesirable or manner of life) and `pangit ang kanyang mga kilos' (his manners are ugly).
In Ilocano, ugly is `laad' or `alas'. `Laad' ("ugly, ill-favored, unsightly, repulsive, loathsome, shocking, detestable, odious, horrible, horrid, offensive, disgusting") connotes both the physical and the moral.27 On the other hand, `alas' is more on the moral sphere ("indecent, immodest, impure, obscene, unchaste, lewd, dishonest; dishonorable, shameful, unbecoming, indecorous, improper; unsightly, uncomely, unsuitable, ugly; shocking, disgusting").28 An example is `naalas na ugali' (bad custom).
So far we have shown that beauty for the Filipino mind is related to truth and to good.
Beauty as a Preferred Transcendental
A mother forbids her child from doing a bad thing because it is "pangit, hindi magandang tingnan, nakakahiya" (ugly, not nice to look at, shameful). Between the choice of the good and the beautiful, the mother prefers the beautiful as the approach to the ethical.
Furthermore, the value of `hiya' (the value of self-worth, of not losing one's face before others) has an aspect of the beautiful.
Why is beauty interchangeable with truth and the good? For the Filipino mind the reason is not because they are transcendentals because the Filipino is a concrete thinker. His thinking is not cerebral but holistic, which flows both from the heart and the head. Between the heart and the head, what moves him more is feeling (damdamin). To feel implies to feel with others (pakiramdam). This is because the Filipino does not compartmentalize his faculties.29
His non-dualistic thinking tends to unify the object and the subject. This point can be illustrated in the word `sarap.'30 Sarap is applied not only to food, but also to hearing, as in the expression, `sarap dinggin' (pleasant to hear) or `sarap na estorya' (pleasurable story), to other senses like `masarap maligo sa dagat' (nice to bathe in the sea), `sarap na babae' (sexually pleasurable woman), `pasarap-sarap' (sitting pretty), `sarap ng buhay' (pleasure of life). `Walang sarap' is not only tasteless, but something that is also worthless, or not good.
APPLICATIONS
What are some of the applications of the above considerations? There are some important pastoral implications.
A well-known Indian theologian observes that "Christianity may appear to be a wordy religion."31 By wordy, he means, for example, that liturgical services tend to have an "abundance of words in the form of proclamation, preaching, reading."32 Verbosity is not only confined in liturgy. We also find it in catechetical programs. This verbose approach seems to suit the Western mentality with its emphasis on the printed word. But this approach to conveying the truth has not fully diagnosed the patient. A physician prescribes the right medicine because one person's medicine can be another's poison.
Each culture has its particular approach to the truth. "For example, truth is intensely perceived and powerfully expressed by dance in Africa, by silence in India, and by aesthetic forms in Japan."33 Africans can express the Apostles' Creed in drums and dance.
The Hindus hold that the deepest religious truths cannot be conveyed through words, but only through religious experience. This religious experience is best attained through silent meditation.
Govinda claims there are parallelism between meditation and art.34 When the mind is in the state of perfect concentration, it eliminates the non-essentials of the subject. Likewise, art, which starts with the use of the external world, arrives at a higher reality by eliminating all accidentals. Both the meditator and the artist need the intuitive state in order to be creative. "The contemplation of the beautiful, according to the Buddha's own teaching, makes us free from all selfish concerns; it lifts us to a plane of perfect harmony and happiness; it creates a foretaste of ultimate liberation, and thus encourages us to strive on toward Realization."35 The truly beautiful embodies inner truth.
The Japanese are known for their aesthetic approach to truth. Aesthetic value holds the highest rank in the Japanese value system.36 Beauty in Japanese thought "is not limited to physical beauty, i.e., beautiful flowers, beautiful women, but involves spiritual beauty also" because "Japanese demands purity of mind, refinement of tastes, of individuals, mutual love."37
Nakamura Hajime, another Japanese thinker has a similar opinion:
Japanese expressions are for the most part abundant in aesthetic and emotional feelings. A special kind of logic may be found, but it is quite different from that generally called "logic." Japanese, rather, emphasized the aesthetic way of expression and the artistic way of life, and, with regard to scientific thinking, they tended to base their studies upon individual facts.38
Which of these three approaches to the truth best suits the Filipino? Like the Japanese, Filipino thought is concrete and the foregoing evidence hints that beauty is the Filipino approach to truth. In other words, to teach the Filipino through beauty instead of words will be more effective. For example, liturgy with beautiful singing, a beautiful background and a tableau will have more impact than long homilies.
We do not mean that the Filipino is not at all verbal. There are programs where people talk and talk but nobody listens. This is perhaps why
Filipinos like politicians talking because many Filipinos seem to consider
election campaigns to be a form of entertainment. But in terms of moving
the Filipino, we believe that the aesthetic approach will bear more fruit than
the usual verbose approach.
1. Leonardo Silos, "Tagalog and the Question of Being," Philippine Studies, 29 (1981), 5-25.
2. See Chapter IV.
3. Leonardo N. Mercado, "Aesthetics," in Applied Filipino Philosophy (Tacloban City: Divine Word University Publications, 1977), pp. 1-17.
4. See Chapter III.
5. Jacques Maritain, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry (Cleveland: The World Publishing Co., 1954), p. 67.
6. Ibid., p. 68.
7. Ibid., p. 69.
8. Ibid., p. 72.
9. Ibid., p. 80.
10. Ibid., p. 85.
11. Ibid., p. 86.
12. Ibid., p. 89.
13. Ibid., pp. 98-105.
14. Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. by Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper and Row, 1975).
15. Ibid., p. 79
16. Ibid., p. xv.
17. Ibid., p. 81.
18. Ibid., p. 74.
19. Loc. cit.
20. Ibid., p. 208.
21. Loc. cit.
22. Ibid., p. 13
23. Ibid., p. 12
24. Mercado, Applied Filipino Philosophy, pp. 6-7
25. Morice Vanoverbergh, Iloko-English Dictionary (Baguio: Catholic School Press, 1958), p. 114
26. Ibid., p. 296
27. Ibid., p. 161.
28. Ibid., p. 8.
29. Mercado, Elements of Filipino Philosophy, pp. 53-72
30. Mercado, "Filipino Aesthetics," pp. 6-9.
31. Felix Wilfred, "Inculturation as a Hermeneutical Question," Vidyajyoti, 52 (1988), 427.
32. Loc. cit.
33. Felix Wilfred, "Dogma and Inculturation," Vidyajyoti, 53 (July, 1989), 351.
34. Lama Anagarika Govina, Creative Meditation and Multi-Dimensional Consciousness (Wheaton, Ill.: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1976), pp. 151-156.
35. Ibid., p. 154.
36. Kosaka Masaaki, "The Status and the Role of the Individual in Japanese Society," in The Japaneses Mind, Essentials of Japanese Philosophy and Culture, ed. by Charles A. Moore (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1967), p. 257.
37. Loc. cit.
38. Nakamura Hajime, "Consciusness of the Individual and the Universal Among the Japanese," The Japanese Mind, p. 188.