Transcendentalia Satyam Shivam Sundaram
[quote=Hindu Mantra]Satyam Shivam Sundaram[/quote]
The Transcendentalia (the order in which they appear in the mantra above)
1. Satyam/Verum (Truth)
2. Shivam/Bonum (Good)
3. Sundaram/Pulchrum (Beauty)
So, as per Hindus, truth is priority 1, then comes good in second place and last but not the least we have beauty.
Questions:
1. How does the West order, in importance, the transcendentalia?
2. What are your own thoughts on the matter? How would you order the transcendentalia?
I ask because I feel many if not all our problems are caused by not getting our priorities right. For example, I'm a sucker for good-looking peeps and my life is nothing but a series of disasters caused by my idée fixe with beauty.
The Transcendentalia (the order in which they appear in the mantra above)
1. Satyam/Verum (Truth)
2. Shivam/Bonum (Good)
3. Sundaram/Pulchrum (Beauty)
So, as per Hindus, truth is priority 1, then comes good in second place and last but not the least we have beauty.
Questions:
1. How does the West order, in importance, the transcendentalia?
2. What are your own thoughts on the matter? How would you order the transcendentalia?
I ask because I feel many if not all our problems are caused by not getting our priorities right. For example, I'm a sucker for good-looking peeps and my life is nothing but a series of disasters caused by my idée fixe with beauty.
Comments (44)
I'm not acquainted with "Hindi priorities of transcendentals" but, during the Scholastic Middle Ages in Europe when "the transcendentals" became foci of metaphysics, I don't recall them being given a set, indefeasibly reasoned, "order of priority" since each is conceived of as an essential feature, or category, of being (i.e. substance).
I suppose through a phenomenological-pragmatic prism I conceive of "transcendentals" in order of predicates used discursively for describing, selecting & recognizing ... (and not as reified abstract 'properties' or 'ideals' of objects (pace Plato et al (re: universals)):
(A) "beautiful" ... ought to care
(B) "good" ... ought to flourish
(C) "true" ... ought to translate
... a mirror-image of your (alleged) "Hindi priorities", that is, from a horizonal, ground-up existential perspective (i.e. immanent) in contrast to a vertical, top-down ontological perspective (i.e. transcendent).
I'd say most problems are caused by incorrigibly failing to discern between 'tractable and intractable and pseudo' problems to begin with, Smith. I think you're making a category mistake referring to existential (pragmatic) "priorities" in terms, or the context, of some "priorities of transcendentals" (metaphysics).
The other thing I wanna know is how to we close the gap between the real (immanent, tangible) and the ideal (transcendental, ethereal)? Pragamtism wins, nevertheless idealism is indispensable. For a moving target, shoot in front of it!
That's a good point but I guess the big issue here is that Hinduism tend to develop those elements separately.
Truth, good, aesthetics, beautiful, etc... are represented like in a circle. They are not hierarchical.
I even think we should not think on it as our "West" thought but what Buddhism really stands for.
:chin:
So,
1. Truth
2. (True) goodness
3. (True) beauty
3017amen (profile)
[quote=John Keats (On a Gracian Urn)]Truth is beauty, beauty is truth. That's all ye know, and all ye need to know.[/quote]
Maybe, just maybe, Truth = Good = Beauty. They're the same thing?!
My analysis is incomplete. Maybe someone can help out. Establish the truth ( :chin: ) of the following equalities:
1. Truth = Good
2. Good = Beauty
My neighbor is an ugly little bald-headed self-righteous SOB, spreading lies behind your back and pretending. That's the ugly truth. Dunno what's he good for. Then again, he's only human.
The True, the Bad, and the Ugly. A holey trinity?
"The gap" encompasses immanence like the horizon – it's ineluctable.
I guess to idealists it's "indispensable" ...
:snicker:
[quote=Ms. Marple]Most interesting.[/quote]
That's why, I suspect, verum, bonum, and pulchrum were designated as transcendentalia; they describe an ideal or best-case scenario. It would've made my day so to speak if all 3 were, well, inseparable and acquiring 1, any one, meant getting the other 2 as well (package deal of sorts).
You might then wanna say "In your dreams Agent Smith, in your dreams!" :sad:
Arigato gozaiumus.
To each his own. I don't wanna give up on something so numinous even if it means a trip to the psychiatrist for psychosis! Madness is better than Sadness? :chin: I think I chickened out 180 Proof.
What is = what ought to be = what is desirable?
If you can honestly say that is your experience, then I think you must be enlightened; I am unenlightened.
These are ancient attributes and can be traced back to the origins of human thought itself. Hence one may find them or some variant thereof in every ancient philosophical system, and which will hold their ground (truthfulness) with some expertise.
Sat, Chit, Ananda
Perhaps in interest of being precise one should clarify, a mantra, strictly speaking, is also an aphoristic formulae (i.e. needs unpacking), in their old language, which simply happens to be Sanskrit. It has nothing to do with its popularized usage/interpretation of repetitive chanting. That concept is a later day add-on.
Why assume these "principles" are propositional (cognitive) stances? On what grounds – "principle" – does one "really believe" truth if "truth is the first principle"? (re: problem of the criterion) :chin:
What's more "numinous" than, as I've pointed out, the encompassing immanent horizon? (Jaspers, Spinoza ... Democritus, Anaximander, Laozi) :fire:
Because one internalized this principle early in life, before one's cognitiive ability of critical thinking developed.
I'm not Hindu, but the idea of listing one's hierarchiy of priorities is an interesting one.
Truth and justice seem like they should make the list, but not beauty unless that is taken to mean all worldly pleasures.
At any rate, my top priority is my family, truth and justice be dammed.
You're shallow and you suffer from lack of something in you. This is the true meaning of your desire for physical appearance. I've dated super good looking individuals, and appearance-challenged individuals. I'm speaking from experience.
This might make a little more sense if interpreted along the lines of:
1. (Complete) Conformity to that which is real = (Complete) Gratification of life’s deepest ingrained desire (i.e., the deepest ingrained desire of each and every psyche)
2. (Complete) Gratification of life’s deepest ingrained desire = (Complete) Fairness, as a composite of both that which is (completely) just - correct, right - and that which is (completely) aesthetic
Since we are imperfect, we can’t have it (this equivalency) in its complete, absolute, form - this being instead the ideal - but can only appraise proximity or furtherance from this complete state of Truth/Good/Beauty as ideal, this being the pragmatics of life
And such means of interpreting would not necessarily be equivalent to:
Quoting unenlightened
But then establishing the truth of it? Some of us are still trying to establish the truth of “I am”.
To appreciate beauty, a quality listed among transcendentalia, is, I think, decidely not shallow! Even the Hindus, as outlined in the OP, made a big deal of sundaram. There's an entire branch of philosophy - aesthetics - devoted to the topic.
My response would be that the transcendentalia are going to be beneficial for your family.
On target! I do (for no apparent reason)! :sad:
I attempt to incorporate "ugly truths" (i.e. disvalues) in my conception – negative dialectic (i.e. non-identity) – of "the transcendentals" as
(wherein the former concerns 'judgments-conduct' / the latter concerns 'practices-norms') which are modes of immanent resistance ... instead of transcendent idealizations-idolatry (re: "the Beautiful" "the Good" "the True").
No doubt. But here there is a logically invalid conflation of these concepts in their absolute form - Truth with a capital “T”, and so forth - with non-absolute, and hence imperfect, instantiations of these perfect ideals …. Or so the argument might go.
But yes: The rapist, for one example, rapes because the rapist’s desires are gratified by so doing and, so, the raping is good for the rapist, minimally, while the action takes place. Ever seen the movie Perfume; it illustrates how acts such as murder can be or become aesthetic for the murderer. So too I imagine can become most any commonly deemed wrong that is a personal good for the person engaging in it, like the act of manipulating others. Or, the reality that many truths can hurt, at least in the short-term, and are thereby often treated as bad, furthermore often deemed untrue on this count. Human caused global warming comes to mind.
Nothing new in all this, I would think.
Nevertheless, in any supposition of True = Good = Beauty these terms can only be interpreted in terms of absolute ideals, or universals, from which all imperfect variations which we deal with result. So, for one example, the doing of wrongs is good for the wrongdoer, otherwise they wouldn’t be done, but this instantiation of “good” would be so far removed from the “Good” so as to either be deemed a bad or an evil by most.
To not be addressing these perfect ideals is to instead be addressing the notion of “truths = goods = beauties”, but I’ve never read it expressed as such by any philosopher, and this expression would indeed at best be buffoonery I would think - as per above examples.
Then again, there’s always relativism to fall back on for some - such that there is no such thing as a universality shared by all truths, by all goods, and by all beauties.
Amazing how you're the very picture of clarity, señor!
1. Truth (Logic & Epistemology)
2. Good (Ethics)
3. Beauty (Aesthetics)
How do you explain the conspicuous absence of metaphysics from the transcendentalia? Is it implied/implicit? Nonsense perhaps? Unrealistic (the parable of the arrow)?
Before I forget, a million thanks.
Indeed, there's what we wish for (perfection) and what we have to live with (imperfection). I suppose we feel better about ourselves, being flawed, we can even then conceive of the flawless. There's another thread, by Jack Cummins, on human judgment & error. Can error ever get a handle on accuracy?
As for relativism, I am of the view that it's a suicidal meme (it blows itself up, for apparently no reason at all). Even so, we could set that aside and run with it. Where does relativism take us before it bleeds to death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound?
I'll fallibly affirm "yes". I'm a fallibilist, after all.
Quoting Agent Smith
Ah. I'll leave that for the relativists to answer.
My take on fallibilism: The idea is not not to make mistakes, but to know ? you're committing them? The former is impossible and hence absurd, the latter is Socratic knowledge (I know that I don't know).
Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallibilism#Global_versus_local_fallibilism
Quoting Agent Smith
Why not? "I fallibly know that I infallibly know nothing."
[quote=Ms. Marple]Most interesting.[/quote]
[quote=Heraclitus]Panta rhei or Change is the only constant.[/quote]
Not exactly though, and hence
[quote=Parmenides]Change is an illusion.[/quote]
Heraclitus subsumes Parmenides but the converse isn't true.
Since we can't be correct, let's at least reduce our error!
Merci beaucoup monsieur/mademoiselle!
Specify what you mean in this context by "metaphysics".
IIRC, Aristotle refers to "unity" (i.e. substance), Plotinus-Proclus refers to "the one", Parmenides / Anselm refers to "being" (which I guess corresponds to Plato's "Form of the Good"), etc. Historically, a variety of "transcendentals" besides the usual trinity.
Again, my conception does not consist of "true good beautiful"-as-universals (or transcendent idea(ls)) as, if you recall, Smith, I propose an 'apophatic metaphysics' ...
:up: Yw.
What intrigues me is the plain and simple fact that the 3 components of the the transcendentalia (verum, bonum, and pulchrum) do not mention metaphysics separately, kinda like how omnipresence is hardly ever mentioned in discussions about YHWH. Is omnipresence/metaphysics implicit/deleted as an attribute of/from YHWH/transcendentalia?
NB: Aristotle didn't "kickstart the fundamentals ..." by a long shot; in the western tradition, that would be Thales / Anaximander / Pythagoras ... (and in the eastern tradition, the Upanishads & Laozi, respectively).
:ok:
Very sensible. First is it true? then, (if I am), am I good? and am i beautiful? can be considered.
Quoting 180 Proof
One believes that truth is the first principle of language because otherwise it doesn't communicate, and there would e nothing to learn. Then one comes across the boy or the politician or the priest who cries wolf, and one learns scepticism. Therefore truth is prior to doubt. Mummy says the wheels on the bus go round and round, and that reveals the truth and meaning of language and the world, all day long.
I can work with your appraisal.
How would you respond to the claim that “even primordial sentience needs to be innately aware of truths (conformities to what is real) in order to survive; that only more developed sentience will become in any way aware of notions of ethical good; and that the awareness of beauty is relegated only to the most developed of sentience,” this as we know of sentience on planet Earth … say from monocellular organisms (granting their being sentient) to humans?
This addresses “awareness of”, be it consciously reasoned or not. But, then again, why care at all about truth (lower case “t”) if it is neither a good to be pursued nor something just and, thereby, an aspect of what is fair? This at least for us humans that can discern and contemplate all three.
(For instance, your reply to 180 Proof seems to indicate that truth is both good and fair (in the sense of just).)
I would say that a yeast cell, say, has no language, and no means of representation that could correspond to reality or not in a way that I would connect with the notion of true or false. It responds directly to ingest sugars and oxygen and excrete CO2. Yeast cells have direct access to reality and immediate responses.
A cat has similarly direct access to reality, but is also informed by memory and habit as well as a more complex repertoire of instinctive responses.
Here is where truth and falsehood begins:
Quoting 180 Proof
Above is the story of The Monkey who cried 'Snake'. And it is surely obvious that trust is the prerequisite for untruth, not the effect of truth-telling???
Bonum: Religion
Pulchrum: Epicureanism/Hedonism
A coupla points:
1. I've heard this often, mathematical truths are beautiful. This one :point: [math]e^{\pi i} + 1 = 0[/math] has been voted as numero uno in the looks department.
2. There's this notion of truthiness (vide Wikipedia for details) that may have a lot to do with beauty as it were. Beauty, instead of logical argumentation/justification, could be a reliable indicator of truthfulness & goodness both. A cursory look into mythology will give you some idea of what I'm getting at.
Not necessarily though i.e. the correlation between pulchrum and the other two transcendentalia (verum, bonum) isn't that strong or rather isn't that well established to be reliable - (lies, evil and beauty seem to join forces to produce a lethal cocktail to all who drink from it).
Perhaps the transcendentalia describe an ideal, best-case scenario as acknowledged by other posters.