Educating the human person, educating to Beauty

Abstract

Is it still possible, in an era dominated by technological progress, to talk about education in Beauty? Peppino Impastato dreamed of a land free from habit and resignation, relying precisely on education for beauty. And others, before and after him, believed in the possibility that Beauty can save the world, because man needs to contemplate what is beautiful in order to be elevated to Truth and Goodness. Education in Beauty therefore becomes essential for the human person, so that he can recognize himself as a “beautiful thing” and, consequently, as a participant in goodness and truth. The experience of Beauty, while being a personal experience, is not, however, a solipsistic experience: it says a relationship between the subject that contemplates and the object contemplated. Those who are educated in Beauty are capable of developing relational skills worthy of their personal being, because they recognize that the object has an intrinsic beauty, which derives from its participation in the Beauty of Being, and not from the personal taste of the beholder. For this reason, taste is a faculty to be educated, like other human faculties, so that man, the only being in the world who needs education and aspires to Beauty, can be brought back to the great tree of Being, from which, often unconsciously , draws its lymph and its sustenance.