RECKLESS CRITIQUE: ELITISM AND THE ABSENCE OF EMPIRICISM WITHIN HELLENIC & PHILHELLENIC ARTISTIC DISCOURSE by Jonathan Morgan 13 October 2017 Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts jmorgan@idsva.edu Word Count: 1,549 In this paper I argue that the elitism of idealization inherent in Western aesthetic discourse has been overlooked via the equating of art and freedom and the Ideal as appropriated from the Hellenic world. Through a selective reading of Greek culture, the rejection of materiality, and the presentation of Hellenic aesthetics as innately sublime and superior to all others, a system of intellectual discrimination and bias has developed that favors the abstract over the material and the Ideal over the empirical. The Platonic mistruct of the human body has tacitly guided aesthetic theory for millennia in the West by encouraging the dismissal of non-Hellenic philosophical discourse within both philosophy and art history due to the prejudice of early Modern writers. Awareness of this process is crucial if one has any hope of arriving at a dynamic and widely applicable sense of aesthetic theory and its impact on the valuation of artistic expression.