Daniel McEnerny is professor of philosophy at Christendom College. He is the author of

the difficult good, a to mystic approach to moral conflict and human happiness, and a novel,

The Good Death of Kate Montclair.

His new book is Beauty and Imitation, a Philosophical Reflection on the Arts.

That's our topic today.

Welcome, Professor McInerney.

Thank you, Mark.

It's a delight to be with you this morning.

Right.

A first statement, the human person in your book,

the first, the human person seeks truth through the arts.

Now, this is a little contrary to a lot of aesthetic theory, right?

The truth, I mean, no entertainment, you know, to be, to be pleased.

Explain this.

Yeah.

Human beings seek truth in many different ways, but you're right.

We usually don't think of the arts, and perhaps especially

popular entertainment, as a way to the truth. But one of the main things I want to do in the

argument of the book is show that the artistic image, when it is memetic, that is when it is imitating or better representing

reality, it can be a way of truth, a way of truth in particular into our human pursuit of the good, of fulfillment,

of happiness, as Aristotle understood it. It's not truth in a scientific sense, certainly.

It doesn't give us that kind of hard necessity. But because the

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