The Matter With Things

McGilchrist rightly identifies value as one of the areas which need a major rethink. ‘For the left hemisphere, value is something we invent; which is separate from and, as it were, painted onto the world; and whose function is utility. For the right hemisphere, on the other hand, value is something intrinsic to the cosmos; which is disclosed and responded to’. So, McGilchrist includes ‘value […] as a constitutive element of reality […] as foundational as consciousness’.

He identifies three values as fundamental: the ancient principles of truth, goodness and beauty. These are related to each other, but not reducible to anything more basic. In particular he claims that ‘At the core of beauty is the capacity to lead us to truth’. It is indeed something universal. He recalls the response of Amazonian tribesmen hearing Maria Callas singing: ‘we sense there is something sacred here’, they said. Recognizing and appreciating values is largely dependent on the right hemisphere, he claims, so in a culture where the right hemisphere itself is undervalued, so also will values be. ‘Beauty, morality and truth have been downgraded, dismissed or denied. If you want to see the consequences, you need do no more than look around you’ .

In fact, he urges us to do much more than look – rather we must see, see ‘into the depths so that reality is for the first time truly present’. But even a glance offers a richer experience than words can ever express. He quotes an example by the philosopher Bryan Magee: ‘Even something as simple and everyday as the sight of a towel dropped on to the bathroom floor is inaccessible to language […] no words to describe the degrees of shading in its colours, no words to describe the differentials of shadow in its folds’. Experience trumps all, McGilchrist wants us to understand. There are good reasons to re-present experience but from a representation we cannot reconstruct the full richness of experience, another example of the asymmetric relationship between the larger and the smaller. Strangely, despite his recognition of the dangers and folly of representations and his extraordinary breadth of reading, he does not cite Owen Barfield’s classic 'Saving the Appearances' which anticipates his concerns.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/A73kb8dKMh4



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