It’s good to have knowledge, but it immediately raises the question of how to use it. At first glance, it seems so easy. “Follow the science!” Now, with AI, you do not even have to understand all the details, as chatbots help you find answers. AI has mapped knowledge, creating something like a knowledge space in which we can walk from insight to insight. However, in this space, there are always many paths to choose from. Which is the right one? Knowing this is the essence of wisdom, and AI is of no use in finding it. Instead, acting with wisdom is about knowing one’s values and choosing accordingly.
But the problem with values is that there are so many of them, and there is simply no way to make them commensurable so that we can calculate their proper balance and choose one path and forget about the others. So what do we do? The answer lies in understanding what it means to grasp beauty and be receptive to it.
When Edith Stein considers beauty one of the transcendentals, a property of being that transcends all kinds of beings, she emphasizes the importance of clarity, splendour, radiance, and brightness. It is the light of God poured out over all that is, and Stein considers the human soul receptive to this light. This makes beauty much more than a personal experience of aesthetic pleasure. An animal can experience pleasure in especially tasty food and is attracted to it. But only a human can appreciate the meaning of a festive meal and choose it for its beauty.
When understood for what it is, beauty becomes a trustworthy guide to what to seek. In the experience of beauty, the knowledge space becomes not a bewildering range of options but a means of walking peacefully where we are meant to go.
For Stein, the soul is the centre from which life flows. It is the unifying centre of all life’s processes, whether biological, psychological, or spiritual. As we change in life, our soul changes with us. If we live well, our soul becomes better, too. It becomes more receptive to beauty and more easily guided by what is not merely attractive but truly beautiful.
The beauty of the Cross of Christ is the hardest to understand, and no philosopher could ever grasp it. We can see it only through the eyes of faith in the resurrection. Such faith changes one’s soul’s capacity to understand beauty for what it truly is—the means by which we are drawn into love of nature by understanding it as God’s creative expression.