“Rubens, for instance, takes a gross pleasure in female flesh, rendering it truthfully from lack of imagination and analysis. Idealist painters like Bourgereau awake to the divergence between Nature and their academic standards of Beauty, falsify the facts in order to delude themselves. The greatest, like Rembrandt, paint a gallant, a hag, and a carcass with equal passion and rapture; they love the truth as it is. They do not admit that anything can be ugly or evil; its existence justifies itself. This is because they know themselves to be part of an harmonious unity; to disdain any item of it would be to blaspheme the whole.” https://library.hrmtc.com/2026/04/30/rubens-for-instance-takes-a-gross-pleasure-in-female-flesh-rendering-it-truthfully-from-lack-of-imagination-and-analysis-idealist-painters-like-bourgereau-awake-to-the-divergence-between-nature/ #academicStandards #aleisterCrowley #analysis #anyItem #asItIs #awake #beauty #blaspheme #book #carcass #deludeThemselves #disdain #divergence #doNotAdmit #equal #Evil #existence #facts #falsify #femaleFlesh #forInstance #gallant #greatest #grossPleasure #hag #harmoniousUnity #idealistPainters #inOrderTo #justifies #knowThemselves #lackOfImagination #liberLegis #love #nature #NewComment #paint #passion #PeterPaulRubens #quote #rapture #Rembrandt #rendering #takes #TheBookOfTheLaw #truth #truthfully #ugly #whole #WilliamAdolpheBouguereau

“But much of the time, it’s more important that a person is speaking #truthfully than that they’re speaking the #truth, especially when the answers are not yet clear.” aeon.co/essays/our-e...

Our epistemic crisis is essent...

It is inescapable that if we are not #honest with ourselves, i.e. that we #truthfully face our personal #denials of reality, then we will be much more vulnerable to external #deceits, #lies, and #propaganda.