16
"The Good, the True, and the Beautiful
are coextensive with Being”
– Hans Urs von Balthasar
Issue 16
October 1, 2015
It is common to say that everything is relative, or “Well, it all depends.” On the surface, perhaps, yes, but at the bottom of things or at the end of things or at the center of things, that won’t do, for there are three ideas that are not relative; they are absolute. They are the good, the true, and the beautiful. They are called the ‘verities’ or the ‘transcendentals’. We say that something may be true or good or beautiful, but it is not the thing we mean, at least in this world, it is something about the thing.
For example, we might say that something is good. Whether that is or is not the case may be impossible to determine. Proposed examples may always be controversial, but transcending (note the word) any and all definitions or disputes is the idea that there is such a thing as good. It is a truth. An absolute. A verity. That is the case also with the other verities, the true and the beautiful. The true is whatever is. Whether anyone can ever prove or even know what is, is beside the point. The same for beauty. Two people may never agree upon an example, but there is such a thing as beauty, however remote or indefinable. The idea transcends the examples.
Further, if there are such things as goodness, truth, and beauty, then there must be their opposites, badness, error, and ugliness. And there are.
The verities, though not something very many get excited about, provide a framework, a structure for all thinking, for without them, all is madness—truly, for nothing can be rational without the transcending foundation of the verities.
The affirmation of the verities—and their opposites—is important, for the popular modern view that everything is relative means that anything can be called anything. That thought is absurd to all. No sane person, not even the most committed relativist, really believes that true and false mean the same thing, that good and bad are identical, that there is no difference between beautiful and ugly, but the vague assumption that everything is relative does permit people to evade hard ethical and moral decisions, individual and social. Much easier to think and say, “Oh well, it all depends” than “wrong” or “right.”
Those who wish to further consider the idea of the verities are referred to An Essay Toward the Other by the writer.
