Rosary Circle
Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio
I have been invited to present a paper at the conference The Power of Beauty in Steubenville, Ohio, at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.
Here is my proposed paper.
Reclaiming Beauty: Winning Back Our Western Civilization-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Proposal for the conference The Power of Beauty
Kidist Paulos Asrat
The paper Reclaiming Beauty aims to document the contribution that beauty has made toward our Western civilization, from the earliest records of God’s love of beauty, to a young child who sees beauty almost as soon as he is born. Our civilization thrived, prospered and matured through beauty. Our great artists, architects, writers, philosophers and scientists have always referred to beauty with awe and wonder. It is in the modern era that beauty began to be undermined and eventually neglected by intellectual leaders.
Reclaiming Beauty will show that the abandoning beauty leads to the death of culture, and eventually that of society. Modern man’s neglect of beauty has initiated the cult of ugliness, leaving us with bleakness and nihilism.
Yet, people want beauty. And they will surround themselves with some kind of aesthetic quality. The man on the street may be able to recognize beauty, but he would not be able to explain why it is beautiful. He may desire beauty, but does not know how to attain it. And he is easily distracted by destroyers of beauty. It is the the task of experts to guide him in the right direction.
With Reclaiming Beauty, I will make a historical, cultural and societal review of beauty. I will trace the steps when beauty was eventually abandoned as a paradigm for civilization.
Rather than attributing beauty to a Godly goodness, philosophers, writers and artists began to view beauty as their as their nemesis. They saw God as a judge who would not let them do as they wished. In order to pursue the image of beauty they desired, they began to look elsewhere. They began to abandon God, and by abandoning God, they began to change their world, filling it with horror and ugliness.
Part of the ideas for my paper will be revisions of what I've been developing over a number of years online at my websites Camera Lucida, Our Changing Landscape and Reclaiming Beauty, and in my articles from Kidist P. Asrat Articles.
The website Reclaiming Beauty is interactive. Members can post their original articles, short commentaries, and articles and excerpts from other authors. I encourage feedback and comments from members. I plan for this online group to develop into more formal groups which can meet in physical locations regularly, where they can building beauty societies whose purpose would be to develop ideas and strategies for bringing beauty back into our culture, and to eventually reclaim beauty.
Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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