“Once upon a time, in a faraway land, a young prince lived in a shining castle.  

Although he had everything his heart desired, the prince was spoiled, selfish, and unkind.  

But then, one winter’s night, an old beggar woman came to the castle and offered him a single rose in return for shelter from the bitter cold.  

Repulsed by her haggard appearance, the prince sneered at the gift and turned the old woman away. But she warned him not to be deceived by appearances, for beauty is found within. And when he dismissed her again, the old woman’s ugliness melted away to reveal a beautiful enchantress.  

The prince tried to apologise, but it was too late, for she had seen that there was no love in his heart. And as punishment, she transformed him into a hideous beast and placed a powerful spell on the castle and all who lived there.  

Ashamed of his monstrous form, the beast concealed himself inside his castle, with a magic mirror as his only window to the outside world. The rose she had offered was truly an enchanted rose, which would bloom until his 21st year.  

If he could learn to love another and earn her love in return by the time the last petal fell, then the spell would be broken. If not, he would be doomed to remain a beast for all time. As the years passed, he fell into despair and lost all hope. For whom could ever learn to love a beast?” [1]

You might recognise the story. It’s a story most have grown to know and love. It’s a fairy tale that has enchanted many childhoods since the time it is thought to have originated, which is said to have been around the mid-eighteenth century in France. Since then, we have read, watched and listened to many iterations, but the gist remains the same.  

Listen as the story continues.  

Angry and bitter, and locked away in his castle, The Beast and his staff had all but lost hope. Until one stormy night - as fate would have it - eventually, a beautiful girl happened to grace the doorstep of the castle.

His strident fury seized him, and The Beast refused to co-operate with the Beauty he saw before him. After time and with shining eyes, the bitterness and anger melted away. The Beast would come to see Beauty and he could not help but fall in love with her. Her name was Belle, and he became enchanted by her elegance.

He was one step closer to breaking the spell. The Beast fell in love with the girl, but that was not enough. He must earn her love and she must love him back. And if she is to love him back, she must be free to do so. The Beast pondered, how could such a beautiful, young Beauty fall in love with an ugly and hideous beast such as he?

The rose petal was falling, the clock was ticking and in an act of self-sacrifice, the Beast freed the girl from her captivity in order that she might save her beloved father. Would she return or not? He did not know. All he knew was that his love for her willed her good, and so he knew he must give his own life for the sake of his beloved.

But alas, the girl did indeed return by her own admission, and fall in love with the Beast is what she did. What sprung forth was a nobility that she recognised the beauty within his soul. Finally, the prophecy was fulfilled - the curse broken, and the Beast turned back into a man.  

Stories have a way of teaching us about ourselves, our society and our culture. On his essay on fairy stories, Tolkien tells us that Fairy itself is far from being supernatural, it is the most natural of worlds, and reminds us of the deepest truths of existence. 

So what are the truths that one can distill from this fairy story? 

Essentially, one must have the courage to look past the superficial characteristics of a person; to look beyond appearances and to contemplate a deeper understanding of the beauty that lies within. But more than that, one can extract the clear distinctions between beauty and ugliness. One must understand that Beauty is a virtue that one must strive for. When one strives for ugliness; therein lies the root of desolation, vice and most undoubtedly, imprisonment.

Ok, how does the story of the Beast and his Beauty relate to us, though? 

Well, we are participating in a somewhat comparable narrative. We are the characters; the protagonists, if you will, in a similar and real-life fairytale nightmare – where the culture is wrestling with Beauty and the Philistine beast. 

But what is a Philistine, and why is the Philistine a beast? 

The Old Testament of the Bible tells us that the Philistine’s were the bad guys; the bullies, who constantly clashed with the Israelites. The Philistines were by nature a destructive and expansionist mob. Although the fundamental cause of conflict between the Philistines and Israelites can be attributed to the age-old quest for land and dominance; culture clash played an immense role. The Philistines and their culture were anathemas to the Israelites.  In other words, the Philistines were cultural decimators.

This notion culminates itself in the infamous story of David and Goliath, where the giant and beastly Philistine Goliath challenges the Israelites to a duel, “…I am a Philistine. So choose one man and send him to fight me. If that man kills me, he wins and we Philistines will become your slaves. But if I kill your man, then I win, and you will become our slaves. You will have to serve us… I dare you to send me one of your men and let us fight.” The young David steps forward and accepts the challenge. Without weilding a single sword, the small Shepherd boy brings the giant down - cuts off his head and with him; the tyrannical oppression of the burdensome Philistine incursions.

Today’s Philistine shares similar traits, but is somewhat distinctive to the Philistines written in biblical times. The modern-day Philistine beast incurs to seek to capture, enslave and impose their bestiality. The 18th Century German Poet, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, speaks of the modern day Philistine when he remarks: “The Philistine not only ignores all conditions of life which are not his own, but also demands that the rest of mankind should fashion its mode of existence after his own.”[8] 

So, who exactly are these modern-day Philistines that we speak of? 

They are the disciples of the post-modernists. They have armed themselves with an ideology which insists that truth is relative, and nothing is objective. They have a deity, where many worship at the temple of the “I” or The Self. A self-free from the past - conventions - moral norms, social expectations, often from God and most prominently, from objective reality. Everything outside of the self is irrelevant to that Self. They have divested all facets of society, but none more shrewdly than in the realm of Aesthetics.

Their Art and Architecture no longer raise one’s gaze to the Heavens as it once had; to beyond the self, but rather, they point to The Self. The Philistine Beasts build their buildings in their own image and likeness and enslave the peasantry in which they believe to rule over to live, work and worship; demanding that their subjects prostrate in adoration at the golden calf of the modern age. These Philistines have patron saints, and often appeal to their credos when they petition doctrines such as, “form follows function,” to justify the soul-crushing onslaught. They are antithetical to Beauty and have brainwashed the masses into believing that beauty is non-falsifiable and that therefore beauty does not exist. These heretical doctrines have been used and continue to be used to justify the greatest crime against beauty that the world has yet seen. It is the spell that would curse civilisations, forcing citizens to live in beastly and unseemly urban environments.

To put it further, the Beasts of our civilisation, The Philistines of our times, the modern-day Goliaths, are those who insist that utility supersedes beauty. These are the dogmas that have become the touchstone for many of our modern-day Philistines. To appeal to the words of Sir Roger Scruton, if the last 60 years have taught the culture anything, it’s that if “one considers only utility, then the things that we build will soon be useless.”  We have become the modern-day Israelites.

Yet, all hope is not yet lost. There are many who recognise the oppression. The culture is slowly waking from this cursed slumber. The perjury that has been thrust upon society for the last six decades are beginning to wane. Many are calling out the Hersey.

One of the soldiers leading the charge against this incursion is a German philosopher named Dietrich von Hildebrand. Just before his death, Hildebrand saw that he would, after many years of contemplation, finally begin his work on the restoration of Beauty. In his seminal work, Aesthetics, Volume I, Von Hildebrand attempts to rehabilitate the concept of beauty as an objective; rather than purely subjective phenomenon.

Hildebrand outlines the object and necessity of beauty on the human spirit when he explains, “…it is extremely important to understand the central objective good that the existence of beautiful things is for the human person. And from the perspective of the ecology of the spirit, it is necessary for us to grasp that the elimination of poetry from life, the destruction of the beauty of nature and especially of the beauty of architecture, terribly impoverishes human existence, and indeed damages and undermines it.”

He goes on to say, “The beauty of the environment in which one lives - one’s house, even if it is very simple, like the farmhouses in Tuscany; the view from one’s house, both near and far; the architectural beauty of the neighbouring houses; the beauty of the sun that shines into the house, and of the shadow cast by a tree - all this nourishes the soul even of the simplest man or woman, entering into their pores even when they are not concentrating on it. And this applies to every situation in life… The atrophy of this sensitivity is a terrible loss, and this ought not to be interpreted as a progress that modern man has made in the industrialised world. We should instead seek to understand the consequences for man of the withdrawal of this spiritual nourishment.”

Throughout the book, he makes the case that Beauty is not subjective but is instead the way that human beings come to experience the gift of Truth. Although it’s objective, von Hildebrand notes, that doesn’t mean everyone sees it. In the same way that Belle was able to recognise the beauty in The Beast, so too, as Hildebrand demonstrates, it is often only the lover who can recognise beauty. One must take the time to gaze with wonder at what is given to truly see it.

Hildebrand expounds this when he illustrates, “Some things can only be approached with great reverence, for it is only then that they disclose themselves to us as they truly are. One of these is beauty. It is of course true that the philosophical analysis of beauty demands a genuine sobriety and the thirst for truth that is required by philosophical eros; but this analysis also requires us to approach beauty with reverence, indeed with love. Beauty kindles love, and only the one who remains captivated by it, only the one who is intoxicated by it, only the one who remains a lover while he is investigating its essence, can hope to penetrate its essence.”

Hildebrand illustrates that when we are surrounded by beauty, so too will our souls become beautiful. He tells us, “We expand, and even our soul itself becomes more beautiful when beauty comes to meet us, takes hold of us, and fires us with enthusiasm. It lifts us up above all that is base and common, it opens our eyes to the baseness, impurity, and wickedness of many things.” We see this most aptly in the transformation of the Beast in the story of Beauty and The Beast, where at the mere presence of Beauty - does The Beast become arrested by this beauty - that he can’t help but to emulate it.

The culture must begin to break free from the shackles of the Philistine Beast and to heed to the works of those such as Hildebrand. To observe and revert back to a primordial approach to beauty. This is not a matter of choice, but is an imperative.

And yet… the story is not over…

When the Philistines heard that Israel had assembled at Mizpah, the rulers of the Philistines came up to attack them. And when the Israelites heard of it, they were afraid because of the Philistines. 

They said to Samuel, "Do not stop crying out to the LORD our God for us, that he may rescue us from the hand of the Philistines."  [1 Samuel 7] 

And so must we cry out in hope that we too might be rescued from the hands of the modern-day Philistine Beasts. We must seek to break the spell and to be freed from the shackles of this captivity.

In the meantime, all hope is not yet lost. Until that day comes, I would urge you to heed to the words of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:  

“My dear, 

A soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone. 

For the world has given up on beauty. It doesn’t believe in fairytales anymore, or happy endings. 

So a soul that sees beauty is a soul thought to be insane by the majority. They call it stuck up, delusional, and abnormal – all because it sees something better that it can hold out for. 

But, if my words mean anything – hold out for that beauty. Walk alone until you grab it. The pain of walking alone against the stream is worth it. 
 
Falsely yours”  

― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

Cover Image: La Primavera, by Sando Botticelli, in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence . Image from wikipedia

Montparnasse Image: By Mbzt - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15593924

1. Narration, Beauty and the Beast, Book by Linda Woolverton

2. 1 Samuel 17:50-53