Season 1 Episode 2: Beauty & Ugliness

In this episode of Beauty, Brokenness, and the Cross, Dr. Sawyer is joined by Billie Hoard to discuss Beauty, the beautiful, and suffering in light of Hoard & Hoard’s concept of eucontamination. There is a lot of food talk, so listen with a snack? Music is from Epidemic Sound.

[06:14] The three Transcendentals are Beauty, Goodness, and Truth. Within Christianity, these go back to medieval scholasticism (think Thomas Aquinas) but were drawn from Platonic and Aristotelian thought. Aquinas was heavily influenced by Greek philosophers whose works were rediscovered and translated into Latin and the vernacular  during the Renaissance.

[11:24] To be clear: I like that book, The Wisdom of the Body by Hillary McBride, a lot.

[12:10] Gnosticism is typically used as shorthand for a denial of the body and elevation of the mind and spirit. Historically it was a dualistic strain of philosophy (a Christianity) that not only valued the mind over the body/material but taught a kind of elitism of those who could separate themselves from the body/material world.

[19:33] I’m talking about Dr. Traci C. West. Scholars of critical race theory like Eduardo Bonilla-Silva argues as well that there is a kind of “racism without racists” that ignores the ways that individual people also contribute to racism. Understanding systemic racism is important (see Ibram X. Kendi), but so is paying attention to individual behaviors.

[20:19] My doctoral training is in ethics!

[21:47] “Second naïveté” comes from French philosopher Paul Ricœur’s work in hermeneutics. 

[22:01] The Anthony Bourdain video, worth the whole 5-minute watch. 

[28:23] Mystic Julian of Norwich: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well…” 

[29:07] Because food is neither moral nor immoral. Our relationship with food may be, how we source our food may be, but food itself does not have moral weightiness (in my humble opinion).

[29:42] My friend Rebecca Wolfe wrote her dissertation on the intersection of purity culture and diet culture. 

[32:12] For me, it’s artichokes. 

[38:06] William Butler Yeats, “Easter 1916"

[38:36] “Beautiful Scandalous Night”