Joyfulness, an Objective Property of the Clear Blue Sky
I have often said to colleagues and friends that I don't believe in Ockham's Razor (AKA the Principle of Parsimony)--that is, the principle that one should not posit more explanatory principles for experience or evidence than is necessary. I suppose this isn't really true; I believe the principle, but I just think that our experience requires a vast number of explanatory principles. I think that the world contains a great plenitude of beings, properties, principles, and so forth, many more than most metaphysicians are willing to posit. In his Aesthetics , Dietrich von Hildebrand, another very non-reductionistic metaphysician, calls the reader's attention to many phenomena which most philosophers have tried to explain away, but which he thinks cannot be so reduced. Among these are phenomena like the joyfulness of the clear blue sky. To look at the sky on a bright day is to see it as bearing a quality of joyfulness, of "festive splendor". Hildebrand contends (...