by Leon Gork

Created on: February 07, 2007   Last Updated: January 20, 2008

Already nearly 2500 years ago Plato stated that beauty and style are objects, just as real, if not more so than any tangible object we perceive with our 5 senses.

Unfortunately people persist in seeing beauty and style as subjects and not as objects. As long as we do this we will never know what they are.

Beauty and style are the most important objects in our lives because they determine all the choices we make in life.

Not knowing what beauty is results in making wrong choices and taking wrong action. Ultimately beauty and style affect how we are going to behave towards each other and towards objects in the universe.

I'm sure that at some time or other every person has made mistaken judgments about people and objects and has suffered as a result. It happens when we buy what we think is a beautiful or stylish dress and then find out it's not, and it happens when we choose a life partner who seems beautiful, good and stylish and we find out too late that the person is the opposite.

Plato must be right because it's absurd to think that an important "thing" like beauty and style is only a vague unknowable opinion and not something definite and knowable like an object.

He regarded beauty and style as objects like tables and chairs and therefore knowable, not like opinions and judgments which aren't knowable.

According to Plato beauty and style are parts of all objects. They appear to be non existent because they aren't perceivable by any of the 5 senses.

Scientists have shown that all objects consist of particles. The smallest particle that can be observed by the senses is the neutron. They know, however that the neutron can be further divided but they admit that they don't have instruments to see the smaller parts of the neutron.

We conclude from this that there is a smaller particle than the neutron in every object in the universe which cannot be divided and is invisible to the most sophisticated sense based instruments we have to date.

This means that Plato was also right in considering our senses, by themselves unreliable for seeing the smallest particle of objects. He called that small, invisible particle the real object.

I believe that whatever exists in the universe can be perceived. Therefore if it can't be perceived by my 5 senses it either doesn't exist or there must be some other way besides the 5 senses to perceive it.

I don't think anyone will agree that beauty and style doesn't exist. Therefore, according to my hypothesis we must perceive it by means of a mechanism other than the 5 senses.

Also, if it exists, it must exist in every object and must contain beauty and style and all other invisible objects.

This means that beauty and style exists in every object.

We need to ask ourselves: What is the mechanism that we possess which enables us to see beauty in every object in the universe?

It's a mechanism which every living object must possess.

Plato's conclusion is that this mechanism is an object called "the good".

The good is like the beautiful; an object the same as any other object. All objects reveal each other only if we treat them as real objects.

Only by relating to beauty and style as real objects and by applying the real object, the good can we experience them.

The good and the beautiful mutually complement one another; by means of the good one sees the beautiful and someone who sees the beautiful is applying the good and is called good or a good person.

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