3. History of Aesthetics: Plato on Beauty

Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) famously said, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” Within Plato’s writings, many of the core ideas and questions in philosophical thought began, including questions about reality, knowledge, justice, virtue, and so on. Unsurprisingly, the ideas and questions became more complicated or involved over time, but the foundations were laid in ancient Greece. Whitehead’s statement appears to hold when talking about two of the key ideas in aesthetics: art and beauty. We’ll explore Plato’s theory of art next time, so we can focus on beauty here.

Introduction to Plato

What makes Plato unique and memorable is that his works were written as dialogues, usually with Socrates as the main speaker. There are many debates about whether (or when) Socrates was speaking for Plato, but we do not need to address those here. Just be forewarned that claiming to know for sure what Plato said (as opposed to one the interlocutors) comes with an added layer of difficulty sometimes.

The dialogues often consist of Socrates engaging different people in the city (the first public philosopher?) and starting conversations about different topics. Many of the dialogues address a question: What is piety? What is knowledge? What is justice? And, after circling around the question and discussing the fine points for a while, they usually end by leaving that question unresolved. We don’t necessarily with certainty why Plato left the questions unanswered, but it’s reasonable that it was for his readers.

By leaving things open, readers are invited to participate and continue in the conversation. The other aspect is that engaging in conversations allows others to challenge our ideas and assumptions, which helps us to refine what we believe about a given topic. By not clearly stating his own view and keeping himself separate, Plato allows the reader to continue the conversation and sharpen their own view.

Plato mentions beauty in a few dialogues, but his most famous discussion is found in the Symposium. In this dialogue, Plato distances himself from the content. Apollodorus narrates the event of Agathon’s party, where it takes place. And when Socrates gives his speech, he recounts the words of Diotima. In other words, Apollodorus tells what Socrates said, who tells us what Diotima said.

Plato’s View of Beauty

Platos’ Symposium, widely regarded as a great work of literature as well as philosophy, consists mostly of a series of monologues among a handful of friends. They decide on this night to present speeches about love (drinking was also involved). When Socrates takes his turn, he connects love with beauty and knowledge. As Socrates was known for questioning everyone and showing that they don’t really know what they claim to know, he recounts how he got questioned by Diotima in the same way.

We might disagree about the ordering of objects, but we have all found some objects to be more and less beautiful. For Plato, this means that there must be something that is the most beautiful, which he believes is Beauty itself. The perfect Form of Beauty that exists in an immaterial realm. So how can we access that perfect image of Beauty?

Diotima explains to Socrates that people begin by seeing the beauty of a physical body. From there, we notice the beauty of many physical bodies. We then raise up to the beauty of ideas, which culminates in seeing Beauty itself. Now, not all people make it to the highest level of knowledge about Beauty. But it’s something to strive toward.

This progression seems simple; we use lower beauties to rise up to the highest Beauty as if we’re climbing stairs. But what can we learn from this? Remember, these were speeches about Love. So, Plato writes that beauty is the object of love. We love beautiful things. Think about your favorite works of art; you want to experience those more than others. If you’re attracted to a person, you want to spend more time with them. But it isn’t simply being near to them, we desire to ‘possess’ them in a sense. Knowledge clearly plays a role in our perceptions of beauty that rise like stairs.

What motivates us to follow this progression? Beauty is connected with love, according to Diotima. She says that people want to reproduce (or literally to give birth) to beauty. Sometimes beauty inspires us to want to create, but we also want to reproduce the experience of beauty by sharing it with others. This is analogous to human beings having the desire to create more human beings through reproduction.

Practical Implications

Plato certainly had some strange notions of reality, let alone ultimate Reality. And it may seem too abstract to serve any real purpose for us today. But, in fact, we do subscribe to some of his ideas, even though we may hold very different principles of reality.

First, beauty is not passively received only. Sure, we may occasionally catch something beautiful randomly or suddenly or unexpectedly. But we should be purposeful about our pursuit of beauty. We don’t have to settle for what we currently think is beautiful. Our tastes (we’ll get to taste eventually!) change over time.

Second, beauty is connected, to some degree, with knowledge. We may not think that ultimate Beauty is found in an immaterial realm, like Plato. But we would find it strange for someone to have little to no knowledge about paintings and claim to know which painting is the most beautiful. Comprehending the beauty of something, like paintings, music, or dance, requires some knowledge to gain a deeper appreciation. One can certainly find a painting beautiful without any knowledge of artist, genre, context, or so on. But we need some knowledge to comprehend it more fully. And this goes back to the first one that appreciating beauty is an activity.

Further Reading: Plato’s Aesthetics.

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ARL News

There’s still time! Tonight (Feb. 28, 2024) at 6:30pm, you can join a conversation about Beauty, Love, and Knowledge in Plato’s Symposium. Sign up on the InterIntellect website.

You can listen to fellow philosopher Gregory Sadler interviewing me on his Ideas that Matter show. We discuss philosophy, art, aesthetics, and beauty.