Which truths can form the normative consciousness of the literature and art of theological materialism?

The always lucid Russell Kirk said that the aim of literature was to awaken us to truth and beauty through the moral imagination, to wake us to truth through symbol, parable, images etc rather than through discursive reason, to help form the “normative consciousness” of what T. S. Eliot called the “permanent things.” That philosophy can apply to preserving any culture, it suggests conservatism in general. The sacred may not be portrayed exactly the same for all people, that is what the separation of powers, states and people is all about---but the sacred remains.

Which beauty, which normative consciousness, and which truths can form the normative consciousness of the literature and art of theological materialism? I prefer to think in terms of “sacred art,” or the “affirmation of the sacred” as leading the philosophy of literature and art, as it does all of culture in theological materialism.

High and low art can both affirm the sacred in their own ways---in the best civilizations they tended to do that (Ancient Greece, Rome, and India, the High Middle Ages, and England from 1688 to 1832). Today both high and low art create works that are inferior because they are both basically against any moral position, although some low art still clings to tradition.

As the evolutionary scientists say, morality has always been marked by its conscious or unconscious affirmation of what is successful in survival and reproduction. In theological materialism high morality defines and affirms the zenith of success as life evolving toward ascending levels of Godhood. Literature and art can affirm this best not by excessively moralizing but by creatively illuminating the moral imagination.

The sacred literature and art of theological materialism can point with its moral imagination toward applying evolutionary realism, because realism most clearly affirms the ultimate evolutionary sacred goal of life.