The Vision of the Soul: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in the Western Tradition

Synopsis

Ours Is An Age Full Of Desires But Impoverished In Its Understanding Of Where Those Desires Lead-an Age That Claims Mastery Over The World But Also Claims To Find The World As A Whole Absurd Or Unintelligible. In The Vision Of The Soul, James Matthew Wilson Seeks To Conserve The Great Insights Of The Western Tradition By Giving Us A New Account Of Them Responsive To Modern Discontents. The Western- Or Christian Platonist- Tradition, He Argues, Tells Us That Man Is An Intellectual Animal, Born To Pursue The Good, To Know The True, And To Contemplate All Things In Beauty. Wilson Begins By Reconceiving The Intellectual Conservatism Born Of Edmund Burke's Jeremiad Against The French Revolution As An Effort To Preserve The West's Vision Of Man And The Cosmos As Ordered By And To Beauty. After Defining The Achievement Of That Vision And Its Tradition, Wilson Offers An Extended Study Of The Nature Of Beauty And The Role Of The Fine Arts In Shaping A Culture But Above All In Opening The Human Intellect To The Perception Of The Form Of Reality. Through Close Studies Of Theodor W. Adorno And Jacques Maritain, He Recovers The Classical Vision Of Beauty As A Revelation Of Truth And Being. Finally, He Revisits The Ancient Distinction Between Reason And Story-telling, Between Mythos And Logos, In Order To Rejoin The Two. Story-telling Is Foundational To The Forms Of The Fine Arts, But It Is No Less Foundational To Human Reason. Human Life In Turn Constitutes A Specific Kind Of Form-a Story Form. Machine Generated Contents Note: Pt. I The Real, The West, And The Good -- One. The Hunger For Reality -- Two. What Is The Western Tradition? -- Pt. Ii Art, Being, And Beauty -- Three. We Must Retranslate Kalon -- Four. Style And Truth: Conservatism As Literary Movement -- Five. What Dante Means To Us -- Six. Only What Does Not Fit Into This World Is True -- Seven. Re-reading The Book Of Nature -- Eight. Art As Intellectual Virtue -- Nine. Beauty As A Transcendental -- Ten. The Need For Proportion -- Pt. Iii Reason, Narrative, And Truth -- Eleven. Reasoning About Stories -- Twelve. Mnemosyne: Mother Of The Arts -- Thirteen. Novel, Myth, Reality: An Anatomy Of Make-believe -- Fourteen. Retelling The Story Of Reason -- Fifteen. The Consequences Of Our Forgetting -- Sixteen. Still Interested In The Truth. James Matthew Wilson. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.