DE Weekly: The Good, the True, & the Beautiful
Below is an archived email originally sent on August 4, 2025.
The Good, the True, & the Beautiful
What lies at the core of every philosophical inquiry, every invented line of thinking, and every word on every page of every philosophical treatise ever written? I would argue that philosophy’s aim throughout human history has been to ascertain “the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.”
The Good, the True, and the Beautiful is a classical philosophical concept with roots in Ancient Greece, conceptualized by Socrates and later by Plato and Aristotle.
These three words represent what Socrates believed to be the absolute highest ideals human beings strive for in the world. He must have been on to something, because all philosophy since him has relied upon these ideals in some fashion.
A few months ago, I wrote about how Socrates’s “Allegory of the Cave” (explained in Plato’s The Republic) serves as a story about what happens when we try to ascend to the Good.
“The idea of the Good is discovered last of all,” Socrates proclaims, “and it is only perceived with great difficulty. But, when it is seen, it leads us directly to the finding that is the universal cause of all that is right and beautiful.”
Socrates compared the Good to the truth, and argued that while it is difficult to ascend there, we must try.
This ancient context of goodness, truth, and beauty survived into the medieval period, when Christian theological thought dominated the realm of philosophy.
Two thinkers in particular, Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas, integrated these ideas into their own philosophies better than anyone.
For Aquinas, the Good, the True, and the Beautiful represented nature, that is to say, they represented God. Because of this, Aquinas believed these virtues were something we as humans can strive for, but never fully understand or attain.
It’s like trying to square a circle, Aquinas says; since God is beyond our understanding, so, too, are the Good, the True, and the Beautiful beyond our understanding.
We know these are good things to work toward and strive to understand, but we cannot hope to ever truly get there.
What was true for Aquinas is true still for Christians today: these ideals are a rock, a stable foundation that precedes us (read: God, the embodiment of these ideals), while simultaneously representing something infinitely greater than us and what we can understand or ourselves attain (read again: God).
Just like Socrates, Aquinas must have been on to something, because even the secular philosophers of the last few centuries worked within this conceptual framework to explain the same point, albeit from a different point of view.
Take Friedrich Nietzsche for example.
Nietzsche understood, like Aquinas, that there is a good, true, and beautiful that is perfect, but beyond our understanding (at least for now). It can even be argued that Nietzsche also understood this to be God.
However, when Nietzsche proclaimed that “God is dead, and we have killed him,” he understood that in a secular society that rejects God, there would have to be something to replace Him.
For Nietzsche, this was the Übermensch.
Übermensch is roughly translated to “Overman” or “Superman,” and references a hypothetical human who transcends the natural moral order (the one derived from God) and creates their own set of moral values and ideals.
In a world without God, the Übermensch overcomes nihilism by transcending nature and creating their own conditions for meaning and purpose where none exist.
Sticking to Nietzsche, I think the Übermensch is born of his “will to power” concept. Nietzsche believed that every human being was driven by an innate will to power, which I also wrote about a few months ago.
More than a desire to gain power, this Will goes beyond what Nietzsche called mere survival. It also encompasses self-actualization and overcoming obstacles to finding meaning in life. It wills us to overcome our limitations and become something more than what we are.
In this way, Nietzsche’s Übermensch is not characteristic of domination or a desire to rule others. It’s characteristic of his will to power, or what I would call a Will to the Good.
Joining Nietzsche’s secular moral order with that of Aquinas––the natural order, derived from God––we can take the first step in our aim to understand the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.
Within us all is a rock, a foundation upon which our ideals precede us. This manifests within us as the Will to the Good.
Our will is greater than our flimsy layers of emotion and perception; our will is an orientation––an orientation to God, to the natural moral order. To the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.
Existentialism espouses the same ideals in its own right. Those three timeless ideals are encapsulated into one: meaning.
When we search for meaning, we seek the truth. When we do so, we begin our ascent to the Good. This is the Good that Socrates explained 2,400 years ago: the truth.
Meaning, as it relates to our lives, might be the truest sense of the Good we can hope to achieve.
“What is the true meaning of life? What can free us from being trapped in meaninglessness, boredom and mediocrity? The fullness of our existence does not depend on what we store up or what we possess. Rather, fullness has to do with what we joyfully welcome and share.” –– Pope Leo XIV
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Brandon J. Seltenrich
P.S.––
There are some philosophical ideals which permeate all thought. The Good, the True, and the Beautiful are some such ideals. I hope you enjoyed my own input as it relates to these ideals.
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