Jon Awbrey is a fellow on the PORT-L list. He's very interesting, hard
to read, and sometimes drops a bit worth saving. I've left out his
original message to which he is responding.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2002 20:20:01 -0500
From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@OAKLAND.EDU>
To: PORT-L
Subject: Re: [PORT-L] Beauty = Good = Truth.  Period.

[snip]

beauty = good = truth.

the summum bonum is one indivisible.
the triverse names and all the others
are but so many signposts along the way.

i have written of this many times at length,
and maybe i will go look up some old notes,
but for the moment i would prefer not to.

as it turns out:

human beings are not very expert at the way of good --
they get overwhelmed by the qualitative subtlety of
deciding whether a single act is good or not, since
that depends on weighing all its future consequence.

human beings are not very adept at the way of truth --
they get overwhelmed by the quantitative complexity
of all the provable theorems, trivial and treasured,
that devolve from even a small set of fixed beliefs.

so that leaves the way of beauty, the sense of what
fits, as the one distinctively human specialty, and
it is this that we rely on as a guide to the bounty.

and that is what figaro means to me.

jon awbrey

¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤