Quote of the Day

~John Hodges in his lecture "Philosophical History of Beauty"~

Concerning the misuse of emotion (i.e. laughing at slasher films and crying during Hallmark commercials) :

"Because if you can see the image of God dismembered and not be moved, something's wrong. You should be angry about that; you should be revolted about that. There's something perverse about that. If you can be moved to tears by things that are sentimental hogwash, you see, then you're off base - you're off balance. What need to be able to do is re-calibrate our emotional sensibilities, our relationships in our emotions to things that are genuinely worth being upset about or worth not being upset about. That's wisdom."

Concerning the absolute of beauty:

"The modernist position in aesthetics I think is spelled out pretty well by Kant: 'There's nothing that's absolute, but we can yet know beauty based on our subjective responses.' And most people in our day hold that position - whether they are Christians nor not.  So I think Christians need to take a stand at that point and say, 'No. That's not all there is.' The pre-modern position described by [Jonathan] Edwards has been all but forgotten in our relativistic age, and it's the source of beauty is the nature of God Himself. In any other area of thought, we would be the first to hold to absolutes. Why not here? Rethinking our position on beauty may seem abstract, or theoretical, and without practical use. But, I want to argue that doing so will give us a new insight into a lot of things: man's nature, general revelation, common grace, creativity, worship, art, the gifts that God has given the people to be salt and light in the culture. All those things will be revamped, rethought, I think, far more multifaceted, if we take up this chore."