Concepts of Beauty in Philosophy

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Ellie Robinson        Conceptions of Beauty        Philosophy

There are many different perceptions of beauty. Some believe that beauty comes from within; some believe that it is simplicity, and some believe it lies in perfection. I am going to explore some of the more famous concepts of beauty from philosophers prior to the Renaissance.

I believe that in any study of philosophy, Plato is a good starting point. Plato expressed his beliefs on the topic of beauty in his text ‘Symposium’. The general theme in ‘Symposium’ is love. Socrates sets forth his view through a conversation with Diotima of Mantineia, who believes that you should be taught to appreciate and love true beauty. The theory is as follows.


At an early age, you should be taught to love beauty represented by a beautiful body, a human body. When this is realised, you can see that this body shares beauty with other beautiful bodies and this becomes the basis of loving all beautiful bodies and not just one. Then the learner should realise that the beauty of souls is superior to the beauty of bodies. The second stage is to love beautiful practises and customs and to recognise that all beautiful customs share a certain charm, or beauty. Then, the learner should recognise beauty in all different kinds of knowledge. Socrates thinks that the final stage should be experiencing beauty itself as something not embodied by anything physical or spiritual.

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In ‘Symposium’, Plato draws a clear line between beautiful things in the world of sense, and beauty itself in the intelligible world. This runs parallel to Plato’s dualist theory that there are two worlds, the world we inhabit and sense, and the world that we can’t know of.

When analysing Plato’s theory, it is quite obvious that this is quite unlike the conception of beauty today, where people would say it is quite impossible to ‘experience beauty itself’. I also believe that people would say that knowledge isn’t beautiful, but powerful.

For Plato, beauty transcends the ...

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