One Realm of Beauty

I see the same error in defining two realms of beauty in Plato as in his two realms of Being. The beauty of sights and sounds, of living objects, is real beauty, and the “idea” of beauty as defined in the abstract is secondary.

Plato thought his kind of God first made the Idea of, say, a bed, but I say these objects evolved in the material world along with the idea of a bed in our minds. If there is an “ideal bed” it is evolved to in the material/supermaterial world. The reality is not the idea but the bed itself. Efforts at defining the zenith of evolution with finality probably can't be made final because life is always evolving, so we can only have working definitions of Godhood.

The thought that art itself is inferior to the Idea in art needs to be transvalued, as does our abstract definition of the “word” as God. The reality and truth of art and of life is in the living evolving object, evolving all the way to Godhood.

This does not change the definition of high art as the affirmation of the sacred, which Plato might agree with. But the sacred is seen as the zenith of material and supermaterial evolution. This suggests that our view of art involves our whole worldview. Questions about the sacred future seem to move through all the fields, religion, philosophy, science, art, etc. but they end up grounded in material and supermaterial evolving life.