Summa on beauty

In the last several posts, we've done some heavy philosophical lifting to get at a better understanding of beauty. In case I lost you in those abstractions, here is a brief summary of those posts:

1. Beauty is objective. Some beings are more beautiful than others, although every being has some share in beauty, insofar as all beings possess esse, a participation in God's being. Those beings who more fully participate in the being of God, show forth more of they mystery of being, and therefore are more beautiful, from an ontological perspective. A tree and a human can both be beautiful, but the spiritual capabilities of man make him more beautiful (a tree cannot think, will, or commune with God, but a man can do all these and more).
2. Beauty is the self-revelatory property of being. Here is a quick take on the relationship between the transcendental properties of being: A thing is good insofar as it is desirable; what is desirable is also intelligible, insofar as it must be known before it can be desired (True); only that which is visible to the intellect, presenting itself, can be known by the intellect (Beautiful); what can present itself as "this thing" rather than "that thing" must be unified (One). In this schema, beauty is the bridge by which we come to a deeper understanding of the mystery of being itself.
3. Beauty is characterized by a lumen-species structure. There is an appearance (species) of a mystery that breaks forth from what appears (lumen). So a beautiful being simultaneously reveals and hides the mystery it re-presents. Think of Christ's humanity revealing the invisible divinity. 
4. Beauty is closely related to the dynamics of love. Insofar as there is a double movement that results in union between the lover and beloved, so too in our experience of the beautiful, there is a double movement from the beheld and the beholder that unites the two. 

Sainte-Chapelle, Paris.
Stained glass is another good example of how beauty both reveals 
and hides a mystery. It symbolically shows forth some of the mystery of the 
New Heavens and New Earth. It presents us with a radiant darkness!

In our next post, we will apply some of these findings to Mother Teresa's charism.