The Platonic ideals and Elizabeth Scarry’s analysis of beauty can both be understood in terms of the unvoiced structures established at the first tier of consciousness. In the Phaedo dialogue, Socrates logically proves that the absolute quality of conceptual forms or ideals like equality and beauty must be necessarily remembered because of the impossibility of direct experience of these absolutes. Scarry defines one of these absolutes, beauty, as “that which we want to repeat.” For Plato, the ideal of beauty is a remembered absolute, while Scarry defines beauty in the present moment in terms of our desire to repeat. Both are explaining our sense of the absolute in terms of repetition.
For Plato, absolute forms or ideals have a quality that doesn’t exist in our concrete experiences with the entities and events in our conscious version of the world. Their absolute quality belongs to an infinite realm that can never be touched concretely. They exist as qualities we aspire to but can never achieve. The unvoiced, infinite realm that Plato requires already exists in the continuous physical core of experience we establish at the first tier. Since core experiences are unvoiced, they can only be remembered indirectly in the grounding of our conscious thoughts.
The Platonic ideals belong to a realm of experience that precedes the conscious world of knowledge we create. The core of experience we establish at the first tier is ineffable, unvoiced and beyond the reach of knowledge. It represents a continuous domain of physical engagement with the unknowable realities we encounter. It cannot be remembered as a concrete set of events, but it provides the continuous physical core of experience that grounds us in the world.
If, as Scarry suggests, beauty is the desire to repeat, where does that inclination originate? In the pursuit of beauty, a Platonic ideal, we aspire to repeat lines of action that lead to experiences of the beautiful. Yet our designation of things as beautiful is the result of a highly personal assessment. We experience beauty as an absolute, ideal quality even though the beautiful things we pursue are personal and often oddly idiosyncratic. The absolute quality of what we are pursuing resides in the unvoiced, physical core of experience established at the first tier of consciousness.
Plato sees beauty as an absolute ideal, but Scarry sees beauty as personal. Our grounding in the physical core of experience at the first tier provides both, a sense of the absolute in a continuous flow of unvoiced personal experience. This is the reality that lies outside of Plato’s cave, inaccessible except through the filter of the conscious world of shadows we create. It is the grounding for who we are, and, unlike the realities outside of Plato’s cave, it remains potentially available to consciousness through intuition, imagination and creativity. It is our source of guidance and wisdom, and although it resides outside of the cave of consciousness, it remains potentially accessible to all.
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