Synthesizing four ideals of humanity
pp. 157-168
in: Diederik Aerts, Hubert Van Belle, Jan Van Der Veken (eds), World views and the problem of synthesis, Berlin, Springer, 1999Abstract
Herbert Read talks about four ideals of humanity—Primitive, Greco-Roman, Byzantine, and Oriental—in his The Meaning of Art [1]. Read derives these four ideals of humanity from his study of the history of art on the presumption that art, in one sense or another, involves creation of beauty, of pleasing forms, and that the sense of beauty which prevails in a specific artistic tradition is inseparably associated with the notion of an ideal type of humanity widely accepted in that artistic tradition.
