Contemplation of truth and human perfection

Abstract:

This article shows the moral implications that the current aesthetic values’ inversion has in human life and in its perfective dynamism. One of the attitudes belonging to modern or “faustian” man is the substitution of contemplation by productive action, which becomes demiurgic, this is to say builder of a new man. Two are the moral causes of this absolutization of poietic praxis: acedia, sadness that man tries to evade through the most agitated activity; and pride, through which one denies submission to any end. The consequences are resentment towards the individual man with his limitations, and the transmutation of truth, good and beauty. To face this attitude, man has to start by recognizing his order to happiness and his contingency. From this metaphysical humbleness the affirmation and contemplation of truth as well as good and beauty in reality, mainly of man as the image of God, will reappear. The outcome is an ordered human life, also in the practical activity, where the communication of life among friends and between man and God comes first

Key words:

Contemplation, beauty, praxis, acedia, pride, happiness