We are, it seems, one of the rich countries, which allows us to spend what it takes to make our ideologies credible, to welcome all those who share the belief we have in our wealth and to believe us protected, although this last point is starting to weaken. But have we thought about what wealth is? Prosperity comes from Latin prosper, which meant happy. Happiness cannot be quantified, and wealth seems to be quantified.
Of the three basic qualities of truth, good and beauty which can only be approached qualitatively by expressing themselves with words, unlike the quantitative which is expressed with numbers, two details often leave one perplexed. The first is the choice of good and not good, a distinction in Latin languages that the Anglo-Saxons all translate with a single word, good or gut. The second is that by combining them two by two, being qualitative concepts, we can only obtain other qualitative concepts. It’s quite simple with the truth and the good which give the just which cannot be quantified; it is still quite simple with the beautiful and the true which give the pure which cannot be quantified either; but it becomes complicated with the marriage of the good and the beautiful which gives the richness which seems to be quantified. Would wealth be quantitative? And would it be wrong to claim that it is only a three-way marriage between what is beautiful, what is good and what is good?
First of all, what is the difference between good and what the Anglo-Saxons don’t do? We have two ways of approaching these topics. We can approach them through our five senses, perceive truth through touch like Saint Thomas, beauty through sight and…
