Aesthetics: Beauty, Nature, and the Eternal Forms
The Aesthetic and Its Problems
Diversity values (and their opposites) include moral, ethical, patriotic, charitable, pleasant, and useful aspects. However, other realities, such as health, the sacred, and family, don’t easily fit into these classifications. Beauty, both natural and artistic, often lacks immediate utility or commercial value.
There are at least three ways a person can relate to beauty and nature: through their own artistic creation (Art), and as a spectator of both. Aesthetics (Aisthesis) is the branch of philosophy that studies beauty and its opposite. Questions include: What is beauty? Is all artistic creation necessarily beautiful? What kind of relationship is created by the contemplation of beauty?
Nature as the Supreme Artist
The Greek concept of nature is considered in two dimensions: the whole world and its own autonomy or self-regeneration of life, which exempts any explanation because man is already part of it. This view gave nature an independent character, free from the whims of the gods, as nature itself was capable of creating diverse lives and cyclical rhythms. Hence, nature is considered the supreme artist, the specialist who handles all the laws of life and death.
The natural purpose of each species is its very beauty, and the world encourages harmony, an evolving force. If we consider that the difference between man and the rest of creation is his reason, then the perfection of reason, or knowledge, is what beauty is and what we should put all our energy into. Therefore, what is good and beautiful must be the same in humans, unless they voluntarily decide to depart from it.
Greek thought never considered that technical advancements (and human ambitions) would exceed and pervert the natural ends of man. They did not think that it would disrupt the harmony and beauty to which their natural tendency should supposedly point. There was no more than a necessary law of contrasts to estimate more precisely the positive. In short, the aesthetic is totally absorbed by the ontological and ethics.
Beauty: Eternal and Intelligible
(Inspired by The Lion King)
The World of the Senses and the World of Forms
According to Plato, reality is not reducible to time (past, present, or future). If everything is constantly changing or regenerating by the law of contrasts, there must be something unchanging. Within this continuous change, we should distinguish two fields: the sensory (senses) and the intelligible (not what we see but the object of intelligence), which is immutable = FORMS (the same as saying the concept).
The Sensible World Imitates the Forms
The world of forms can explain the changes of the sensible. All that is sensitive, under a universal craving, tends to make or get its own way and be full. This continuous search for the full explains death and birth. This endless cycle of life is an attempt to reach the unchanging eternity. The closest thing to it is its own continuous cycle. Beauty and goodness are in the form forever. The supreme beauty = eternity, which is the subject of intelligence. The beauty of the sensuous is relative. Therefore, any sensitive nature is understood as an aspiration and imitation (eros) of eternity.
Sensible things remind man, very diffusely, that there is an eternity in which he participates through his intelligence. This explains the love of the beautiful and the natural inclination in man, especially the philosopher (= eternal lover of the beautiful and full).
Sensible World and Number
Platonism tended to bring the intelligence and the eternal to the world of reason and is related to mathematical knowledge. Understand that mathematics is a knowledge about eternal forms that lead us to the harmony of the senses by numerical relationships (proportions of the body, architecture, poetry, music, etc.). Mathematical ratio gives sensible form = beauty and intelligibility. The sensitivity of man, even without knowing arithmetic, compared to the beautiful is because it is configured for the eternal. (The feeling of something is like a silent thinking outside of the perceived.)