Vision of the Soul

The Vision of the Soul: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in the Western Tradition by James Matthew Wilson, 338 pages

The Vision of the Soul is James Matthew Wilson's thorough, thoughtful rebuttal of "the assumption that to be free means to refuse all form; to be intelligent means not to believe in anything; to be well cultured means to see all cultural judgments as, at best, 'merely subjective,' and, at worst, as expressions of power and ideology", a view propounded with "evangelical zeal" by many of today's cultural, political, economic, educational, and religious elites.  His rebuttal begins with his affirmation of Christian Platonism, which he considers the mainstream of Western civilization and culture.  Specifically, he argues for the transcendental nature of beauty, as variously understood by such diverse thinkers as Theodor Adorno, Jacques Maritain, and Umberto Eco, exhibiting it as a window into an intelligible order that underlies the cosmos, and therefore a repudiation of a reductive rationalism that cripples the intellect.  Not only is Beauty real, in this view, it reveals the Real.  With the intellect understood as including imagination as well as logic and responding to beauty as well as truth, the narrative element in human understanding becomes apparent, allowing simultaneously for a revival of the dialectic of tradition which is at the heart of true conservatism and the recovery of purpose and meaning - and with them joy and wonder - in our culture.

The Vision of the Soul demonstrates Wilson's considerable (and complementary) insight into both contemporary cultural issues and scholastic philosophy.  For that very reason, it is a difficult book, shifting smoothly from discussion of the shortcomings of modern conservatism to an examination of Plotinus' aesthetics to tracing the outlines of the ouroboros of postmodern academicism.  Wilson's arguments are not unchallengable, but they are certainly challenging and definitely worth consideration.