The Master Betrayed

Beauty & Authenticity

Beauty does not explain itself; it asks us to attend.

Beauty and Authenticity reclaims beauty as a fundamental human value rather than a decorative luxury. McGilchrist notes that beauty has quietly slipped from public language, replaced by terms such as power, impact, and utility. What cannot be measured or leveraged is often treated as dispensable. Yet beauty, he insists, is not an optional extra. It is one of the primary ways human beings orient themselves in the world.

Beauty is not a matter of subjective taste, nor is it reducible to rules. It is encountered, not constructed. Architecture, music, and art move us not by argument, but by presence. We register beauty with the whole body — through posture, breath, and feeling — long before we find words for it. This immediacy is precisely what makes beauty difficult to defend in a culture that privileges explanation over experience.

McGilchrist recalls encounters with architecture that resist articulation yet exert profound influence. A building such as Brunelleschi’s church of Santo Spirito in Florence is austere, almost plain, and yet deeply moving. There is little ornament to point at, no obvious feature to analyse. Its power lies in the way space itself is shaped — in proportion, rhythm, and restraint. One cannot easily say why it is beautiful, only that it is.

Modern culture, by contrast, often approaches art intellectually. We ask what a work means rather than how it speaks. This creates distance. Standing before a painting or listening to music, people may wonder what they are “supposed” to think. The result is anxiety and alienation. Attention is directed inward toward interpretation rather than outward toward encounter.

McGilchrist draws on Wittgenstein’s famous remark — “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent” — not as an injunction against thought, but as a reminder of its limits. Silence, in this sense, is not emptiness but receptivity. When we allow ourselves to be quiet before beauty, intimacy becomes possible. Relationship replaces analysis.

This has moral consequences. Beauty fosters authenticity because it resists manipulation. It cannot be coerced, optimised, or mass-produced without loss. To create something beautiful requires patience, humility, and care — qualities that run counter to a culture of speed and self-promotion. In this way, beauty shapes character. It trains attention away from domination and toward service.

Architecture provides a vivid illustration. Buildings designed solely for utility often fail even on their own terms. They age badly, are abandoned quickly, and generate little affection. By contrast, structures that inspire awe and care tend to find uses over time. Beauty proves itself practical not through efficiency, but through endurance.

The same is true in music. McGilchrist recalls struggling as a young person with the desire to “understand” what music was about. The breakthrough came with the realisation that music does not refer beyond itself. It is not a code to be cracked. Loving it is already a form of understanding. Relationship precedes explanation.

This insight extends to education. Children should not be given only what is easy or immediately comprehensible. They should be shown what is excellent. Beauty draws people forward, giving them reason to undertake difficulty. Effort becomes worthwhile when it leads somewhere luminous.

Authenticity, in this context, does not mean self-expression at all costs. It means faithfulness to something real — to a calling, a craft, or a way of life that exceeds the ego. Modern culture often confuses authenticity with spontaneity or rebellion, yet genuine authenticity requires discipline. One must submit to form in order to be transformed by it.

Philosophy itself is not immune to this confusion. McGilchrist contrasts much modern academic philosophy with the work of earlier thinkers, whose writing was inseparable from lived experience. When philosophy loses contact with life, it becomes clever but hollow. Authentic thought, like authentic art, grows from sustained engagement with reality.

To recover beauty is not nostalgia. It is a reorientation of attention. When beauty returns to the centre of life, usefulness follows — not as mere efficiency, but as deep human value. Beauty does not compete with truth or goodness; it completes them. In attending to beauty, we rediscover what it means to be fully present in the world.