In Plato, the theory of beauty is substantially dynamic and envisages beauty as something trembling or in internal motion. He describes the experience of beauty itself as an inalienable and constantly self-renewing process of sublimation. At the same time, you can see here whence that aspect of danger comes that plays such a large part in Plato’s theory of beauty: the sublimation which characterizes the realm of beauty is a very precarious one—it never fully succeeds. That taboo domain separated off from reality which we experience as the domain of beauty is problematic, for the most profound reasons, namely due to its inner character, and that it can end again at any time.
Adorno on Beauty
