It’s a mistake to contrast ‘rational’ with aesthetic categories. For example, some people hold that the thesis of man being a rational animal means that man is just a ‘thinking thing’ or that man is simply a ‘decision making machine’, and contrast this with the thesis that man isn’t ‘rational’ but ‘imaginative’, moved by beauty rather than convinced by rationality. What such a view fails to take note of is that it is only in virtue of our rationality that we have any appetite for beauty. Desire for beauty is a rational desire, rational in the fullest sense, rationality which derives both from our participation in the source of all rationality which is also the source of all beauty and the nature of rationality itself, which includes the desire and drive to seek out ends in life and not just means. The beautiful is an end in itself, and not just a means. It is the nature of man as a rational animal to seek out ends. Hence, man, as a rational animal, seeks and delights in beauty.
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Theologians, Inc. 