Gerard Bodifée 0101
Question: Are the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, or the Big Three, a recurrent theme in your work?
Bodifée: It always comes back down to these three. When you sum them up like that it sounds like such a cliché, but that’s because it is so true. Ever since antiquity we have understood that everything can be boiled down to these three. There is no need for us to try to be more original than the truth. And the truth lies in these three. At the root, they are probably one and the same, although this might be an important point for reflection.
Question: Couldn’t these three be one in the practical life of the individual?
Bodifée: Deep down, I would like to think so, and maybe I could even believe it, if it weren’t that in practice I notice that it is not always the case. Sometimes I find something beautiful that is morally reprehensible. Take the F-16, for example, what a beautiful airplane! It moves so gracefully through the air: such control, such elegance, so aerodynamic! But it is designed to drop atomic bombs. So I find this a moral wrong and an aesthetic good. The two do not go together. You could even say the same thing of a tiger: what a magnificent animal! But it tears other animals apart. Can we still call it good?
Now, the beautiful and the true, I am more convinced of. In science it always seems to be the case that when we find something beautiful, it is also true.
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