univ2012

UNIV 2012

Theme: "Pulchrum: The Power of Beauty"

Highly recommended reading:

http://opusdeitoday.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=226

Metaphysics: Criterion for Culture at the Service of the Faith

by: Prof. Tomás Melendo Granados

(Professor of Metaphysics, University of Málaga)

Salient Points *

Based on the last slide above, we can propose the following as paper topics (among others) for UNIV 2012:

• • Fashion: Issues and Recommendations

Notes on Fashion

• • Notions of Beauty: A Survey among University Students

  • Advertising and the Objectification of Women: Proposals

  • Pornography ≠ Beauty: Psychological, Sociological, Moral, etc. adverse effects of Pornography

  • Theology of the Body : The Beauty of Human Love:

  • Christopher West's Theology of the Body

  • Video Games and Media Entertainment: Problems and Proposals

  • Concrete Educational Plan for appreciation of beauty as a metaphysical property of Being

  • "Life is Beautiful": A Review of Beauty-related Movies

  • "You are so Beautiful": A Review of Beauty-related Music and Songs

  • "Good Manners and Right Conduct": A return to traditional values

  • Metaphysics of Modesty, Elegance, and Composure

  • Training in Aesthetics includes Training in Unity, Truth and Good

  • The "Cult of the Body": Problems and Recommendations

  • CCC 2500 - 2503: Truth, Beauty and Sacred Art

  • CCC 2521 - 2525: The Beauty of Modesty, Temperance & Sobriety

*Salient Points: Prof. Tomás Melendo points out the following:

(1) following the appreciations of Mouroux, I think that [beauty and] art, under whichever form, is an essential need of man: it influences him enormously and it introduces serious problems to modern society;

(2) I likewise opine that, just like for discovering truth and for loving and procuring the good, in order to appreciate beauty, a continual effort is necessary, tending towards the acquisition of the conglomeration of habits, which are connatural with what is beautiful; thanks to them, the person who cultivates them finds himself growing in what we know to be good taste, measure, refinement in dealings with persons and things, modesty, reserve, elegance, composure in the most diverse situations, etc.

(3) since that kind of interior formation is imparted on rather rare occasions, a good part of what is being offered today to our equals as <art> and <culture> makes them unable to appreciate the genuine and deeper value of reality or, if you like, unready for the contemplative joy in beauties of a rank higher than what they are often exposed to, and capable of enriching in a sovereign way, their humanity, which is many times maltreated or deteriorating.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

It is necessary to personally possess, and transmit to those we desire to form, the conviction that, when the beautiful is understood as it ought to be, then the education for capturing it is summed up in and elevates all our human potencies and leads them to the summit, leading the soul towards God. It cannot, therefore, be despised; rather, there has to be the contact with what is beautiful, for as long as it is conceived correctly, along with the conglomeration of harmonious effects it encompasses.

All this means that beauty accompanies the totality of everything that exists, from the most insignificant of realities all the way to God Himself. Likewise, that which is beautiful is not some kind of “decoration” added on and external to beings, by virtue of which they are resplendent, but rather the culmination of all and each one of their most characteristic perfections: of their transcendental properties, as they are called in metaphysics.

Concretely, “beauty, properly understood, ought to be contemplated along with the truth and the good […]. For a given form to be beautiful, as opposed to being merely pretty, it needs to be associated with such other values as truth or integrity. These two values of beauty and truth are distinct, although fundamentally inseparable. Both form a unity like water and earth forming clay […]. All forms of art make reference to the truth: the truth of the sight, of our hearing, of the spirit. True beauty is inseparable from the search for truth. When there’s an attempt to create something beautiful separated from the truth, the result is sentimentalism”.

Official Web site of Iraya:

Iraya Study Center

--o--o--o--o--