ABSTRACT
The experience of the ineffable is aesthetic because it is beautiful. The term 'aesthetic' with its antonym 'anaesthetic' once served for all sensed phenomena. The triple association of the aesthetic with beauty and beauty with the ineffable is, perhaps, the most unfashionable view in Aesthetics that it is possible to state and this has been the case for the last 100 years. The ineffable in art is an inspired "element", not a contrivance of mind and/or emotion, as in bad and/or ephemeral art. Even where universal values are spoken of in some religions, it is done in such a way that it is clear that in their mind's eye their own little school of thinking has pride of place vis-a-vis the future of any such universality. Wisdom has a lateral value, but it comes from above, meaning it does not belong to anyone as such anywhere, but to everyone, everywhere.
