John Vervaeke and Christopher Mastropietro: Reinventing Beauty

Here we continue our conversation about ‘reinventio’—the latin word which means to both invent and discover.  The main theme was reinventing beauty, but we spoke about soul, virtue, and faith.  John also proposed reinventing argumentation, and came up with four propositions:

• Beauty is the sweet spot between suchness (intimacy) and moreness (transcendence)
  
• Beauty is the activity of philo-sophia
  
• Virtue is the beauty of wisdom
  
• Dialectic is the beautification of speech to conform to how we practice wisdom
  

John Vervaeke is a professor at the University of Toronto and the creator of the popular online YouTube Series ‘Awakening from The Meaning Crisis’, which is a rich feast of cognitive science, philosophy, religion, and the history of ideas.  What makes Vervaeke special in my opinion is the breadth of his work, but his courage descend the ivory tower and talk to people ‘on the street’—and to exemplify his ideas.  His hero is Socrates, and he embodies the living dialogue and courage that Socrates represents.

I was first  introduced to Christopher Mastropietro by Peter Limberg for his series on Letter.com. Christopher is John Vervaeke’s writing and research partner and co-author of ‘Zombies in Western Culture: A Twentieth Century Crisis’.  A great book which I have used for undergraduate classes in Paris. Chris is among other things an amazing wordsmith who writes and speaks like an 19th Century Henry James/Herman Melville!

Links:
Impossible conversations with Christopher Mastropeitro
Other conversations with John Vervaeke and friends
John Vervaek’s Awakening from the Meaning Crisis

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Intro music: Beautiful Machines by Andrew Sweeny