Sensibility, Taste, and Soul Stench

Sympathy and antipathy are the antennae of intelligence. Intelligence investigates the causes of what repels or attracts. 

The dividing line between two eras is a mutation of the sensibility. --Dávila 

Well, I woke up this morning thinking about the subject of sensibility, which in a way is everything, but what is it, exactly? 

I'm going to say that it is very much like what sense is to the sensible -- the empirical -- only in relation to concrete transcendent realities. Like the perception of beauty, it is an adequation to the object. 

If this is true -- and it is -- then many people have no sensibility at all, or rather, it is submerged into something less. 

Which explains why such vulgarians don't have "poor" taste, but rather, no taste at all. Obviously we are surrounded by such tasteless manimals. It is the oppressive (anti)sensibility of our barbarous progressive age.

Not only is it possible to reject leftism on purely aesthetic grounds, it is necessary, because such institutionalized ugliness cannot possibly be true. Which is why

Only those who secretly propagate the admiration of beauty conspire effectively against today's world.

Time out for some more aphoristic zingers, but note that the zingers zing because they come from a similar sensibility to yours and mine; each of them speaks to an experiential truth, but is embedded in an even deeper sensibility:

To know what feeds us in Christianity, it is enough to feel what chokes us.

After a few minutes of chatting few people leave more than a squeezed pulp. 

Today not to protest against what is wretched is called “having common sense.” 

The secular importance of religion lies less in its influence on our conduct than on the noble sonorousness with which it enriches the soul.

When religion is at ebb tide the stench of souls spreads.  

 Each suppressed taboo makes human existence recede toward the dullness of instinct.

Marxism frees the uneducated from cultural oppression by putting a coherent and catchy vocabulary at the service of his lack of culture. 

Tedium is the trace of vanished transcendence. 

We are only compatriots of those who share with us the same repertoire of references. 

The two terms of the democratic alternative today -- oppressive bureaucracy or repugnant plutocracy -- are canceling each other out. Combining into a single term: opulent bureaucracy. At once repugnant and oppressive. 

Having taste is enough to qualify one as a puritan.

Taste. Interesting word, because it borrows from the world of the five senses, but only in an analogous way; the same with vision and touch -- as when we are touched by what is, strictly speaking, untouchable; or rather, touched by something in the sensible that cannot be reduced to the empirical plane. 

Now, the average tenured, or journalistic, or "artistic" utensil is a utensil precisely because he has no sensibility that hasn't been dictated to him by Big Sensibility.

I just googled sensibility, and the first thing that comes up is "an understanding of or ability to decide about what is good or valuable, especially in connection with artistic or social activities."

According to Big Webster, it is "a capacity of emotion or feeling as distinguished from intellect and will," but this won't do, since we are definitely thinking about "intellectual sensibility," not to mention "spiritual sensibility." Indeed, what is spirituality but a sensitivity to the spiritual?

Now, spirituality at once escapes the senses, but then again, not at all. Obviously. For

The more vivid and intense our perception of what is visible, the better we sense the reality of what is invisible.

And as for intelligent sensibility,

The requisites for seeing with intelligence interest me even more than what we see.

That's about it for now. But hey, where is everybody?

Posterity is a dinner with a few guests. With a few hosts.