Traditionalist school's understanding of philosophy of art

This study concerns Traditionalist School's understanding of the philosophy of art. Traditionalist School, as emerged in the 20th century, is a guiding light to remember the primordial understanding of Being, God and Human in a modernist world. In their systematic, holistic and multi-dimensional philosophy, art has a central importance as for being the exteriorization of the Truth. According to this school, art has a divine source whereas the function of the art is to reveal the higher truths and the theomorphic nature of man per se. By that, it functions as a means for man's spiritual evolution. Traditionalist School's approach explains not only the sacred and the traditional art but also profane art in terms of naturalism and the tendency towards profanation still it manages to explain the related concepts like artist, genius, style and tradition with success. Because of abovementioned reasons, Traditionalist School understands of the philosophy of art and the relationship between art and the Truth worth exploring. The most noteworthy arguments of the Philosophia Perennis considering Being as the exteriorization of the One in a hierarchical and layered manner, and because of the metaphysical structure, this Being cannot be expressed in daily language but symbolism. In this regard, the Being itself is symbolist so that art as a component of the Being refers to symbols by using the symbolist language. In this study, we tried to mention different approaches to art as representation to identify the Traditionalist School's rightful approach. Second, for the sake of completeness, we tried to examine Traditionalist School's understanding of Metaphysics, Ontology, Epistemology and Philosophy of Man. Later, what the art is, what the function of art is and what the meaning of art is examined according to the Philosophia Perennis. Lastly, some problematics and the criticisms towards them is studied to show the success of the Traditionalist School.