Is truth=beauty is true?

We all know people who occasionally proclaim that truth is beauty. But have you ever shared a table with somebody who made the statement in such a convincing way, that you felt that their whole existence was breathing this truth? I did, last week.
I met a stage designer somewhere in Amsterdam, and there he said it. I instantly believed what he said and nibbled on my cookie while nodding my approval. Later that day, cooled down by a bout of Dutch rain, I felt I had to somehow reproduce the philosophical underpinning I have for it. Strolling alongside the pretty canals, crossing wonderful wooden drawbridges, and looking at the reflections of the slanted facades in the last remaining mirrors of ice, I attempted to think about the subject.
The concept of Truth, when extended beyond the purely functional "what is the case" (under certain circumstances), is a concept vague enough to keep many philosophers busy for the next couple of centuries. But that's no reason to shrug. Let's deal our cards:

1. Truth under NO circumstances - mathematical, logical truths, tautologies (eg. Pi is not a rational number)
2. Truth under SOME circumstances - everyday truths, scientific knowledge (eg. Jupiter is larger than Neptune)
3. Truth under ALL circumstances - ultimate Truths (eg. religious truths)

I write "NO" circumstances (or context) in the first case, because these truths don't depend on any context. Of course they hold, but since that fact is not influenced by the context, it doesn't help distinguishing between contexts. 2+2=4 on Mars or among microbes. We would say it doesn't tell any aspect of the "truth" about Mars or microbes. Truths in the second sense, that hold under "SOME" circumstances, do help us tell some aspect of the "truth" about planets, animals, humans, or words, colors, smells. Intuitively, what religious truth means is some kind of generalisation of this second kind of truth, a truth that tells us ALL aspects of everything, and tells it apart. Truth in that third sense is a perfect categorization or taxonomy of everything we dare talk about.

That concept can only be approximated, as we are thrown into Being and possess only eyes here, on the inside. Such approximations (without calling them so) have been attempted by religion since the early rise of human culture (eg. the Gilgamesh). The optimal approximation would be as close as we could get to the Truth (insofar as that should remain meaningful as an absolute concept) and how do we get to such an approximation? How do we make a "move" that is at the same time a generalization of our experience and yet dependent on it. This move, I think, should be described as aesthetic. It holds the uniqueness of an experience (because beauty is what strikes us and inspires us) while generalizing at the same time as we identify it as beauty (the painful comparison to known beauty and past experiences). The aesthetic experience thus qualifies as a candidate for the kind of approximation of truths of the third category.

Some say that you can't do such wild thinking without soon arriving at some Hegelian phrase. Here is ours: (truth in art, like truth in general, requires the harmony of an inner and outer, of concept and reality. (Aesthetics Vol I, p. 343, translated by T.M. Knox)

So yes, affirmative, truth=beauty, our sense of beauty is the organ can perceive the most meaningful truths.

February 6.

Consumption and religion. If you buy a cup of coffee or a Patéis de Lisboa, you just put your coins on the counter without any other emotion than the great taste of this combination. It's my reason (in fact, one of my reasons) to be here in Lisbon and write in the February sun. But if you buy bigger things you know you can't afford to buy just as you please, if you realize the money you buy that thing with is finite, you think it over, you ask questions about the quality of the product. You wait until they convince you to buy it. Until you really believe in it. The act of paying is like a little prayer. Yes, there you tied yourself to your finite being again, you bought some specific product and not another one. That product is charged with meaning now. It is almost electrified with meaning. The money, the abstract Number has become product. You have taken a step in life, you climbed the stairs. The product has delivered you. when I bought my camera, this feeling did not really arouse me. There where but a few remnants of it that still made me euphoric and I wrote more pages than I normally do. So with that new camera I promise I will take pictures and exhibit them here.
Because I must take that travel thing seriously. I don't want to consume, living off what I have piled up in the past years, burning away my earnings, not earning anything new. Must not all newness be deflowered by the price tag society puts on it? I need labels. It doesn't matter how good or bad the narrative is, how good you reader find the metaphores, or the anecdotes. It only matters that it has a label, a price tag. Eleven ninetynine, that's the highest bid till date. Anybody offers any more? I felt I had to write to earn my camera back. At least to provide some justification of my being entitled to it. Because at birth we were entitled to nothing, and we are not entitled to anything we didn't explicitly suffer for, as the Calvinist mantra goes. At the same time, the clurgy is entitled to everything. But let's say I'm not entitled to it. So what?

That night in the hostel I was offered the very last bed they had available. It's always like this. It's doesn't frighten me, all the luck. It gets boring, I get used to it. I shrug my shoulders, take it for granted. I can squeeze little meaning out of it, and I know one day it will dry out. All the luck in the world, all the most improbable coincidences combined, the angelic gestures of all the selfless beings that by coincidence unheard of cross my path will then not be able to produce meaning. At the end of a lived life there awaits us only dullness, only shades of grey that leave us unmoved, detached from the sweating cycle of life itself. It will dry out at the end of our days. But it is juicy still, o yes don't you worry. So a woman with wonderful curls in her black hair enters the hostel room and asks me for a pen. Yes I say you're lucky you asked a writer and I pull out a pen while I say that, handing it to her. A writer she asks interested, how nice! O yes, and I travel in order to gather some inspiration. How nice! by the way, my name is Verity. Like truth? Yes, like truth.