Myth and religion, poetry and prose, painting and music attest to
the fascination of reflections of the sun on the surface of the
sea. For D.H. Lawrence, Henri Matisse and many others, the
experience of sunlight on the sea gives vigour and vitality to our
lives. This short book is one philosopher's enquiry into the
significance of this experience, an attempt to articulate the
meaning of an experience that many people both need and cherish.
The starting point is the undeniable beauty of glittering
reflections on the sea, the most perfect of all beauties, according
to Arthur Schopenhauer. Inspiration is then drawn from ancient
traditions of thought - Chinese, Greek, Indian - that emphasised
the unity of beauty, goodness and truth. The question addressed is
what the beauty we find in sunlight on water shows about our
understanding of the good life and of the way of things. In some
chapters, a parallel question is asked, by way of counterpoint,
about the significance of a contrasting kind of beauty - the
shadowy and subdued beauty that has been especially appreciated in
Japanese culture. In the glistening surface of a sunlit sea, the
author argues, there is a metaphor for and an expression of aspects
of the good life - happiness, spontaneity and intimacy with nature.
In looking at this surface, we have a glimpse of how we would want
our relationship to the world to be. But reflections of the sun in
water are also a metaphor for or an epiphany of reality. This is
the world as it is prior to being subjected to human conceptual
schemes and purposes. It is the world as an integrated whole of
experience - a quicksilver, soft-edged, ephemeral realm whose
source is a mystery. In the swirling, ever-changing and
ever-merging reflections on the surface of a sea whose depths are
invisible to us, there is a symbol of the way of things, of what
Chinese thinkers called the Dao. This book is an exercise in
phenomenology: its aim is to expose the meaning of a familiar
experience of beauty. The author shows how this experience, as
expressive of the good and the true, is - in a sense deeper,
perhaps, than Lawrence and Matisse intended - life-enhancing.
Whether or not the book succeeds in its aim will be judged by
people who, in the words of one travel writer, can find 'no escape
from the mirror-like expanse' of a gleaming sea: it is an
experience that follows them about like an 'all-pervading,
inevitable melody'.
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