Subjectivism

In my recent talk, I shared that postmodernism involves a subjective understanding of truth and of goodness (morality), and demonstrated the falsity of that understanding. I also suggested to my audience--composed mostly or entirely of Christians--that each of them had allowed such subjectivity to creep into their own understanding of these things. Time did not permit, but if any were unconvinced that they were influenced by subjectivity, I could have raised another issue...

Beauty.

Virtually everyone I know would uncritically accept the idea that "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," that while truth and goodness may be objective, beauty is a subjective kind of thing.

And yet it has not always been understood thus. It used to be that truth, goodness, and beauty were each considered objective things, laws of the universe against which one could not argue. Indeed, it used to be that the goal of a liberal arts education was to create gentlemen and ladies by training men and women to discern between good and bad, right and wrong, beautiful and ugly.

And whenever a culture loses its sense of an objective foundation for truth, goodness, and beauty, it is beauty that is the first to be viewed subjectively.