This is one of those pieces I had to sit with before replying. The line about eros never being sterile, always generating something, landed somewhere unexpected for me.
I think about my novel that way now. It started because a scene wouldn't leave me alone before sleep, and two years later it has become something closer to an offspring than a project. Not pure glory, I won't pretend the spirited part of me doesn't want it read and remembered. More like the appetitive turned toward making instead of consuming, the way you describe pleasure's zenith producing children rather than just satisfaction.
What I keep circling back to is your point about the three parts each loving a different beauty. Writing a novel seems to pull from all three at once. Truth in the world you are building, nobility in who you want your protagonist to become, and something almost appetitive in how badly you want to finish the thing and finally hold it. Curious whether you think creative work like that sits cleanly under one part of the soul, or whether it is always a negotiation between them.
A beautiful reflection. It makes me wonder whether every act of creation is, in some way, an attempt at immortality. Not necessarily through fame or legacy, but through the desire to bring more beauty, truth, love, or meaning into the world.
Maybe what we create reveals what we worship, and what we worship shapes what we become.
Deacon, that was wonderful. I particularly am moved by the tying in of the three aspects of the soul, and I'm thinking that those three aspects, the intellect, the thumos, and the appetitive, all reach for the ultimate end in different ways. As you say in the article, the intellect reaches toward Wisdom, who is the Logos. We long to know Him. The thumos is reaching for nobility, but what is the ultimate, infinite nobility? That would be realized in our own theosis, in our becoming sons and daughters of God. What could be more noble? We want to be Him. And finally, the appetitive can have its culmination at the table of the Lord, consuming the second person of the Blessed Trinity Himself, in the form of the Eucharist. We want Him to be in us.
Thank you so much for all the wonderful reflections.
Thank you for writing or maybe more accurately, channeling this piece! This makes me think of how the word “taste” is big with the boom of ai. Maybe, having taste, is having eyes to see, to be in God flow and he flows through his children.
This is one of those pieces I had to sit with before replying. The line about eros never being sterile, always generating something, landed somewhere unexpected for me.
I think about my novel that way now. It started because a scene wouldn't leave me alone before sleep, and two years later it has become something closer to an offspring than a project. Not pure glory, I won't pretend the spirited part of me doesn't want it read and remembered. More like the appetitive turned toward making instead of consuming, the way you describe pleasure's zenith producing children rather than just satisfaction.
What I keep circling back to is your point about the three parts each loving a different beauty. Writing a novel seems to pull from all three at once. Truth in the world you are building, nobility in who you want your protagonist to become, and something almost appetitive in how badly you want to finish the thing and finally hold it. Curious whether you think creative work like that sits cleanly under one part of the soul, or whether it is always a negotiation between them.
Either way, thank you for this.
A beautiful reflection. It makes me wonder whether every act of creation is, in some way, an attempt at immortality. Not necessarily through fame or legacy, but through the desire to bring more beauty, truth, love, or meaning into the world.
Maybe what we create reveals what we worship, and what we worship shapes what we become.
Good thoughts. Beauty has a timeless, eternal aspect to it; thus, to act of creating it seems to always have that hint of immortality.
Deacon, that was wonderful. I particularly am moved by the tying in of the three aspects of the soul, and I'm thinking that those three aspects, the intellect, the thumos, and the appetitive, all reach for the ultimate end in different ways. As you say in the article, the intellect reaches toward Wisdom, who is the Logos. We long to know Him. The thumos is reaching for nobility, but what is the ultimate, infinite nobility? That would be realized in our own theosis, in our becoming sons and daughters of God. What could be more noble? We want to be Him. And finally, the appetitive can have its culmination at the table of the Lord, consuming the second person of the Blessed Trinity Himself, in the form of the Eucharist. We want Him to be in us.
Thank you so much for all the wonderful reflections.
Good thoughts! Yes, all three desires ultimately terminate in God, which is clearer in Christianity with the Beatific Vision.
Thank you for writing or maybe more accurately, channeling this piece! This makes me think of how the word “taste” is big with the boom of ai. Maybe, having taste, is having eyes to see, to be in God flow and he flows through his children.
Thank you for your work, truly powerful