On April 27th, we were pleased to e John Mark Reynolds, president of the St. Constantine School, to speak on the topic of “Beauty and the Destruction of the Individual” as part of the 2017 Acton Lecture Series.

According to Reynolds, starting in the late-Victorian period, American society began to question the existence of beauty, and over time our culture accepted the notion that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Despite warnings by writers such as C.S. Lewis, Christians had adopted this idea by the mid-1950’s. Early on this move was seen as freeing to the individual, but in fact, the loss of objective beauty led many Christian to adopt a reactive and statist solution to cultural problems. Reynolds argues that there are good philosophical and theological reasons to return to objective beauty and even better cultural ones.

You can view his entire presentation via the video player below.