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By John-Mark L. Miravalle, Crisis Magazine, May 20, 2019

John-Mark L. Miravalle

Suppose there is such a thing as objective beauty. Suppose, along with the classical and Christian traditions, that the human person is made for beauty.

Now suppose further, that beauty is a kind of composite, that the beautiful is made up of two parts, one metaphysical and the other psychological.

If such were the case, then the well-being of all humanity would depend on keeping these two aspects of beauty together.

I propose that beauty is indispensable to the fulfillment of all of us, and that beauty is made up of two parts, and that the horror of post-Christian civilization is that we are progressively cleaving these two aspects of beauty each from the other.

These two parts of beauty are “order” and “surprise.”

Order is the metaphysical part of beauty. It is historically expressed by such terms as “regularity,” “symmetry,” “perfection,” “integrity,” and “proportion.” It occurs when a thing is and acts in accord with its own nature….Read the entire article….crisismagazine.com/2019/what-is-beauty-and-why-do-we-need-it