The Birth of the True, The Good, and The Beautiful: Toward an Investigation of the Structures of Social Thought

Abstract

Purpose

To determine where, when, how, and wherefore European social theory hit upon the formula of “the True, the Good, and the Beautiful,” and how its structural position as a skeleton for the theory of action has changed.

Methodology/approach

Genealogy, library research, and unusually good fortune were used to trace back the origin of what was to become a ubiquitous phrase, and to reconstruct the debates that made deploying the term seem important to writers.

Findings

The triad, although sometimes used accidentally in the renaissance, assumed a key structural place with a rise of Neo-Platonism in the eighteenth century associated with a new interest in providing a serious analysis of taste. It was a focus on taste that allowed the Beautiful to assume a position that was structurally homologous to those of the True and the Good, long understood as potential parallels. Although the first efforts were ones that attempted to emphasize the unification of the human spirit, the triad, once formulated, was attractive to faculties theorists more interested in decomposing the soul. They seized upon the triad as corresponding to an emerging sense of a tripartition of the soul. Finally, the members of the triad became re-understood as values, now as orthogonal dimensions.

Originality/value

This seems to be the first time the story of the development of the triad – one of the most ubiquitous architectonics in social thought – has been told.

Citation

Martin, J.L. (2016), "The Birth of the True, The Good, and The Beautiful: Toward an Investigation of the Structures of Social Thought", Reconstructing Social Theory, History and Practice (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, Vol. 35), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 3-56. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0278-120420160000035001