“The student who comes to his teacher and subjected primed with what the modern university praises as the virtue of “critical intelligence” ruined by the shallow skepticism of Hume and Kant before he even starts, rejecting a priori anything which will not stand some superficial dialectical and arbitrary test to tickle his curiosity—such a student may acquire the technology of science and the humanities but he will not experience the reason for either. Such a critical intelligence, whatever its use in the marketplace, is prophylactic of the beautiful, the good, and the true.” — John Senior, The Restoration of Christian Culture
When it comes to the three transcendent virtues—the Beautiful, the Good, and the True—the modern approach of overly defining our terms or literal interpretations will rarely ever work getting us there there. Modern approaches will emphasize gross terminology over a place of wonder and subtlety, and attempt to foster motivations and concepts towards an imminent frame only.
Oddly enough, the case for beauty can almost be stated the same way Justice Stewart said for pornography: I know it when I see it. Of course, not everyone's soul has been cultivated towards beauty to see it (or to see pornography is an evil distorted expression of it). I often come across people stating that beauty is all just subjective preference, and yet objectively noting collectively when something stands out. We are all hypocrites. Perhaps because we deny transcendent guideposts, we assume our views are just personal without realizing there is something intelligible beyond our preferences that comes online when struck by true beauty. We can note attributes of beauty—wholeness, harmony, and radiance—and yet still this doesn't get at the resonance, wonder, and awe that overtakes oneself when we can really be with it. We are not thinking about what it says or means, but just allowing it to wash over our soul. A beautiful song, person, or painting will touch in such ways. We begin to see the part from the whole, as well as the whole is in the part.
When it comes to the good (or morality), you can claim to be a utilitarian, follow a Kantian deontology, or live out an existentialist ethos. All these things will fall short at times. The good can't be confined to a formal system, instrumental approaches, or life-limited narratives. Virtue ethics has the best approach in a sense because it calls for virtue appropriate to the circumstances cultivated through habit. In time, this can be spontaneous in our acts. In other words, we can only show the good through being good; through inhabiting the other as oneself and by acting in ways that are appropriate to the situation. Doing small things with great love, as St. Therese of Lisieux said. Models, like saints or sages, draw us in and inspire us to be better beyond our self-absorbed motivations. We aren't limited by the secular ethos of “being nice” that fails to strengthen our soul, surrender us to the good outside ourselves, and result in the best outcomes. We are made to be good for the sake of it; for its intrinsic value, and its potential to echo in Eternity.
There are relative truths, and some are better than others. But they are merely partial degrees of truth that can only explain the whole from the part. Even mathematics has principles outside of itself that can't be explained through math. Or as Robert Rosen says, “There is always a semantic residue, that cannot be accommodated by that syntactical scheme.” When allowed, what seeps in is ultimate Truth where symbols can at best point. There are two significant ways to present the Truth. One is to indirectly express what it is; such is the purpose of art, mysticism or myth or sacred scripture like the Gospels or the Tao Te Ching. The other approach to Truth is to break down our egoic or worldly distortions of it, and let the Truth speak for itself. Socrates was a master at this. So was the Buddha. The postmoderns went too far relatively and not far enough transcendentally. Again, beliefs through words will ultimately fall short of Truth, but that does not mean there is not an order to such views. There is a hierarchy to relative views, but the View (or Truth) is simply a lack of resistance to what is. It can only be intuited, realized, and embodied as gift.
Literalism cannot explain the cause of beauty, goodness, and truth. There is a mystery to the existence of these virtues that can't be easily compartimentalized in an imminent frame. Yet, we know it when we see it. Or at least a part of us knows—the part that is Whole!