This is the closing panel of our international symposium "Can beauty save the world?" held at McGill University, Oct 24-25, 2025, and focuses on ritual and spirit in the age of disenchantment.

We open with a song from singer-songwriter Tiffany Thompson.

Ayodeji Ogunnaike (McGill), Julian Carrón (Sacro Cuore, Milan), Matt Miller (Dzeici Theater), and Mauro Magatti (Sacro Cuore, Milan) called for the recovery of spirit as essential to beauty’s saving power. Deji drew on Yoruba philosophy, where character is beauty and truth may be transformative rather than pleasant. Fr. Carron asked whether beauty can help us open our whole selves to reality instead. Matt reflected on how beauty matters for change of state vs. change of being. Mauro argued that beauty saves only if we rehabilitate spirit as a structural dimension of human thought— resonant, decentering, transcendent, and mysterious.

The panel was moderated by novelist and theologian Tara Isabella Burton, who also offers closing remarks.

The event was sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation.

Learn more at www.canbeautysavetheworld.com and www.beautyatwork.net

#beautyatwork #beauty #music #ritual #spirit #theology #yoruba #transformation

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This is a panel on the transformative power of art and architecture as part of the international symposium "Can beauty save the world?" held at McGill University, Oct 24-25, 2025.

The session begins with poetry from Olivia Wood, who moderated the panel.

Anjan Chatterjee (University of Pennsylvania) examined our vocabularies to express aesthetic experience and the relationship between transformational experience and third-person rendition. Alberto Perez-Gomez (McGill) noted that the value of architecture has always been its beauty, which orients us toward justice, festivity, and the common good. Stephen Legari (MMFA) shared how collective awe, experienced through slow looking and hospitality, can heal and connect. J.F. Martel distinguished between the beauty of the geometers vs. ecstatic beauty, and how art matters for both.

The panel was sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation.

Learn more at www.canbeautysavetheworld.com and www.beautyatwork.net

#beauty #art #architecture #museum #arttherapy #philosophy #neuroscience #neuroaesthetics #philosophyofart

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In this panel during the international symposium "Can beauty save the world?" held at McGill University, Oct 24-25 2025, Jean-Sébastien Vallée (McGill), Katie Bank (Birmingham), Rebekah Wallace (Oxford), Ian Corbin (Harvard), and Jonathan Berger (Stanford) explored the transformative power of music. The panel was moderated by Stephen Bullivant (St. Mary's London).

We began with a performance by an acapella quartet from the Schulich School of Music (McGill).

Jean-Sébastien described the conductor’s task as creating a sonic space where sound becomes meaning—a community where difference becomes harmony. One of his singers, who had just lost her husband, came to perform because “singing with my choir is the only way I can breathe right now.” Katie and Rebekah described how early modern thinkers saw music as acting on the whole person, not as external stimulus but as an activity of the soul. Ian reflected on the relevance of music to our longing for wholeness, which passes through failure, undoing, despondence. Jonathan discussed his fascinating research on the sonic signatures of sacred spaces, and how the balance between clarity and blur in sound transforms acoustics into awe.

The event was sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation.

Learn more at www.canbeautysavetheworld.com and www.beautyatwork.net

#beauty #music #transformation #philosophy #musicology #spirituality

Support the show