Education

Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Since centuries and up to a few years ago, élites received classical education, whereas technical education was reserved to people with executive tasks. Classical education was essentially based on the understanding of what is beauty, because without this, understanding truth is also impossible – as the famous lines of Keats’ stress. Sensibility, in fact, is a powerful allied of reason in order to make sense of things. In the middle ages this faculty was named sidneresis.

In ancient times and up to the XIX century this meant reading Homer and Vergil, but after the Romantic revolution, the model of beauty changed: French and Russian novels became the paradigm of taste and discernment for educated people. Today nobody reads Victor Hugo, Dumas, Stendahl, Tolstoj. And this resulted in the aesthetical collapse of this time of greed, robbery, carelessness. But I think that something will change in short time, and this is surprisingly due, possibly, to the web. I think in particular to the series Breaking Bad, that rages among the youngsters. It is full of imperfections, it is obviously very pop, but in some way it has the breath, the care for detail, the visual and spiritual beauty that is the mark of the French and Russian masterpieces. A young friens of mine is convinced that this is the new paradigm - maybe..