Also, to risk being redundant, what I mean is that the entire Truth – which is Reality itself, is not accessible by dissecting and recording and classifying everything. While these have truth to them, they are only part of it. When we, like the Enlightenment thinkers, think that this is all there is, we will eventually – having mistaken a section or mode of Truth for the whole thing, find it lacking and discard it for mere feelings or experiences.

The Mad Prophet was right in on sense, I think, that the appearances are important – but wrong in that Truth is against Life. If you define truth to mean merely – as I said above – discursive facts and analysis, you may find that this killing part of truth (the Law which brings Death) is against life.

This truth is incomplete because it lacks beauty – since beauty is about the ‘true depth’ of appearances. Beauty does not stand on its own, but is a result of truth and virtue. When any of the three are defined narrowly enough to be consistent they become incomplete (because of our limitations) and thus one heads down the path to butchering Wisdom in the service of one’s own personal gods.

The beauty in a particular tree, for instance, can not be understood either by an emotion or fantasy, nor by precise measurement of all of its parts and processes. The first describes either a reaction to beauty that might occur, or the human ability of imagination, and the second reveals that there is a pattern of sorts behind it.

Having severed Truth and Virtue and Beauty, it seems obvious that you would on one hand have fantasy (which is beauty without truth) romanticism (which is beauty without virtue) and rationalism (which is truth severed from both virtue and beauty.) Virtue without truth becomes a kind of egoism, and virtue without beauty eccentricism.

The enlightenment cut the body of philosophy – of wisdom – into pieces. It’s no surprise the maggots started to gather.