Beauty as Metaphysical Realism, Meliorism as Ethical Ideal

This paper discusses the relationship between beauty and meliorism in the thought of Charles Peirce and Robert Neville, with passing discussion of Jonathan Edwards, Alfred North Whitehead, and John Dewey. It argues that all things are beautiful or good, and that this is a realistic metaphysical claim. The metaphysics of goodness, however, does not presuppose that all things will grow together or progress (synechism). Synechism (and agapism) or meliorism present an ideal to guide our actions, but that guidance comes from an appreciation of an axiologically laden landscape, which presupposes the metaphysics of goodness. The paper presents a metaphysical realism (along with an epistemological realism), a cosmological materialism, and a moral or ethical idealism.