That is mighty fine company you keep. McCainiacs were once so enamored with Alan Greenspan that they said if he ever died they would have him stuffed, propped up and seated life-like in order to chair the federal reserve board meetings. That is ideology gone wild. What you have described with the above authors is a Christian culture -- A pagan, a saint, two catholics, two protestants all who became citizens of Rome in one way or another. What a human shame that very thing is all in pieces now, ignored by the hellish minds of technocrats enamored with everything but the permanent things you have spent a lifetime pursuing. May God Bless you --- and them too!

Thank you for your response. I must say I'm taken aback by your personal comments. I wasn't expecting that. I was really interested in a critique of my little discourse on beauty.
I try to concentrate upon objects not subjects. But for the record I guess I am something of a curmudgeon. Personally, I consider myself like G.K. Chesterton, in that I'm a controversialist, but without Chesterton's genius (I think that goes without saying) or manners. I guess tempermentally I'm more like Belloc, my hero, and I have a way of making good friends and not so friendly enemies. I don't consider that altogether bad, since I don't think I've ever met anyone worth knowing that hasn't made enemies and detractors.
You are right; I just hate the banal---boring, but I like the absurd.
In exchange I provoke in order to evoke something from others beyond the pablum of polite interchange---I want to hear something they believe to be true and are passionately committed to, to be convincingly confirmed or corrected, and to benefit from the good others see--but I have to be convinced it is a true good.
You might say I keep trying to fill in the gaps, but my making provocative statements rather than by asking questions.
You further wrote:
"The conception of art as the beautiful is fine with me when it is understood to mean something more than aesthetics or a science of the senses that is more related to photography than the immitation of life."
Precisely, that is why I said that the beautiful in art should elevate us, point to and put us in touch with and help open us to the Divine. Transcendent experience, not sensual titilation, not just mere refinement of technique and skill, is what passes for beauty in my world; enlightenment, not entertainment. I think we agree here more than disagree.
Am I eager to know, or do I just like to raise Hell? I can only look at the evidence in my own life; I have evolved from an atheist to a fundamentalist protestant to a mainline protestant to a Roman Catholic; from a narrowly focused musician to some one of broad philosophical, theological, political and historical interests, from some one living an atomistic life to a committed Southern Partisan, from some one totally ignoring social/political issues to someone actively advocating secession and the re-establishment of liberty on these shores. Much of this thanks to St. Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle, Richard Weaver, G.K. and Old Thunder, and Dr. Wilson--among others.
I guess the left would consider me lost, but I see these developments as progress.
But, to speak that phrase we so long to hear from Obama, "Enough about me."
"Beauty is not easy to define but the classic definition of it containing variety in unity and order is not bad."
I like that. True, beauty isn't easy to define. But as elusive as it is to define it's largely instantly recognizable; you know it with certitude when you see or hear it. It's sort of like St. Augustine's comments on time: he says he knows what it is until he has to say what it is.
I'm down with that.
But this is far afield from Dr. Wilson's original points of concern.
tom

Yes, beauty is the splendor of truth. Theologians tell us that the essnce of the beatific vision is knowledge and not love. But as every dialogue of Plato suggests,love is who leads us to this end. Beauty is not easy to define but the classic definition of it containing variety in unity and order is not bad. Justice and mercy, love and war, heaven and earth, are familiar themes in art and their re-presentation is vital to any sense of beauty. The conception of art as the beautiful is fine with me when it is understood to mean something more than aesthetics or a science of the senses that is more related to photography than the immitation of life. I have noticed you are cantankerous and argumentative almost a contrarian. If you were not so familiar with music I doubt that I would even respond but I had a friend who was very much like you --- always wanting to understand but in a rather detached and aloof way that always seemed argumentative and provactive. He became a Carthusian monk where the intellectual life is ordered to the very essence of things and is so much happier there than he would be in the polite and shallow society of contemporary discussion.It is for this reason I always admire your rather abrupt and rude manners --- Not having met you, I assume you are like him and eager to know. Of course you might just be a simple prig wherein any response is a waste of time.

The argument about beauty is an important and oft-forgotten one. It is not enough to say something: one must say it articulately. The overwhelming majority of modern art forgets this concept.

I thought I'd repeat it because I think it's inadequate, especially when one makes the statement comprehensive by saying "all art".
What about beauty?
As someone involved in the arts professionally all my life, specifically in music, I'd say that beauty in and of itself is not only an essential transcendent element in great art, but the least tainted with the immanent and the least agenda driven.
I'm not saying something as shallow as some early 20th century Europeans, advocating l'art pour l'art--the beautiful in art is always allied with the true and the good. I agree with Christian Morgenstern who criticized this sensibility by writing, "L'art pour l'art, that is to say, we've only strength to play."
But I think saying art only serves the supercilious on the one hand or the conflict driven human condition (love and war) on the other is to present a false dichotomy.
Art in its highest expression, I believe, is the handmaiden of the Divine.
L'art pour l'art degrades art to the shallow, the diversionary and merely entertaining. (Is there anything more boring than entertainment?) But I think we degrade the whole meaning of art and stand in danger of reducing it to a kind of Hindemithian "Gebrauchs Kunst" if we conveniently ignore the issue of beauty as a "Ding an sich".
Beauty is not allied with the diversion of entertainment which most use to escape reality. Rather, beauty is that element in art that most purely and perfectly draws us to, if only momentarily, transcend the limitations that bind and blind us fallen creatures, driving us to conflict with one another, Rather, it elevates and opens us to the Presence of the Divine, the apex of Reality.
I often think of this at Mass. What a different experience mass can be due to the music. If the music is banal, as at one parish I attend occasionally, my soul has to struggle to open to the truth and goodness Present there. If the music is profoundly beautiful I feel assisted in entering into the mass. Words, ideas or images fall short of the power of beauty in the music to do this.
Better no music at Mass than the cheap, the superficial and the banal often heard--no matter how well it might be performed!
To ignore beauty as an essential element of art is, in my opinion, not to simply ignore an element of art, but to ignore the very heart and highest purpose of art and reduce it to a mere tool of propaganda. We all know what kind of art that produces---anti-art, soulless and heartless.Is there anything worse than art wrought to "send a message"?
I know we can always extract the beautiful as an ideal or concept from the alloyed effects of human intercourse and conflict--especially if we look long and hard enough at a given event, but only in art do we find beauty in its purest state. We can see that beauty in many astounding landscapes of the great painters, but most intensely and most purely in music. In considering movies and literature let's not forget music along with beauty when we speak of "all art".
My two cents (worth about .08 cents of what it was before the Fed).

But I will agree Paths Of Glory is riveting, and I ejoyed In Which We Serve as very effective propaganda. The worst are Plattoon, and the Warner Brothers cartoons flogging war bonds.

"proud Southerners would not understand the pacificist message not defending your home or your neighbors home. Must be an enlightened New England concept."

Pacifism isn't a New England concept by any means. Agressive war is very much a yankee idea and has been for centuries. Southerners haven't been involved in defending our homes since Lee surrendered at Appamattox. Enlisting in the military of the empire can't be considered defending anything other than corporate and political interests of an elite whose own sons are exempt from conscription.