Philosophical outlooks upon the beautiful
| Author | Gabriela Ratulea |
| Position | Department of Social Assistance and Communication, <I>Transilvania</I> University of Braşov. |
| Pages | 251-256 |
Page 251
The first noteworthy author interested in the philosophical significance of the beautiful was Plato. The importance of its reflection upon the beautiful consists in the idea that the beautiful must be searched for its own purpose, therefore autonomously, without considering other values. In line with this, there has been remarked, in the specialized literature, that Plato was himself an artist preoccupied with music, painting. As a matter of fact, a few of his dialogues have remained in the history of culture as oeuvres of outstanding literary value, such as the Banquet, Phaidon or Phaidros; there is about the dialogues that the historians of philosophy have deemed characteristic for the period of maturity. The issue of the beautiful was dealt with by Plato in Hippias Minor, Phaidros and The Banquet. In Hippias Minor, Plato discusses with Hippias the sophist, the issue of the beautiful, on the line of its being defined in relation to beautiful things. There is a constant of Plato's youthful dialogues, the attempt to define the general of an idea (such as beauty, goodness, rightfulness, virtue etc.); making reference to particular things (that we call beauteous, good, rightful, virtuous etc.). Each and every time Socrates, Plato's character, opposes a sophist, the latter having fallen under the illusion of believing that the particular things below the idea may be confounded with the idea itself. There goes the same way Hippias, too, claiming that the beautiful may be confounded with any beauteous thing (a beauteous woman), or with the most beautiful thing (such as gold), or that it resides in our relation with beauteous things or in the feelings we experience towards these ones (convenience, utility, pleasure etc.). Socrates rejects the idea that the supreme beautiful might be the convenient, the useful or the agreeable. The idea standing out from the Plato's text is that absolute beauty is transcendent in relation to all beauteous sensitive things,Page 252either considered individually, or in mutual relation. Nonetheless, the dialogue Hippias Minor is one of those bearing the name aporetic, in the sense it does not reach to a positive result, it only formulates the negative condition of defining the beautiful. However, starting with this dialogue, there has taken shape the idea that the beautiful is related to the good, an idea that will become fundamental in his later writings. There is well known the fact that Plato, elaborating his theory of the ideas, especially within the dialogue Republic will deem that the idea of Good stands for the supreme idea, which organizes the entire order of the intelligible. [5]. Consequently, the idea of the beautiful is closely connected to the idea of the good, the latter one not only in the moral sense, but also in the metaphysical sense (the good as principle of the being). This way, in the Banquet, Plato identifies the beautiful with the good, and in Philebos, he states that the good must be comprehended within beauty, proportion and truth.
Aristotle's theory must be related to his metaphysical outlook. Unlike Plato, Aristotle considers that forms are not transcendental in relation to the material things they inform, but that they are immanent to these latter ones. Consequently, his theory upon the beautiful conveys upon it a more concrete significance then Plato's. This way, he defines the beauteous in accordance with three elements: the order (the coordination of the parts within the assembly), the determination (the proportion of the beautiful object) and the symmetry (the submission of the variety within unity). In accordance with the antique outlooks which confound the beautiful with the truth and with the moral good, Aristotle distinguishes among several species of the beautiful: the natural, artistic and moral beauteous, to which he likewise adds the mathematical beauteous. As in Plato's case, to this "confusion" there corresponds the lack of distinction between arts and sciences [3]. This means that, as a matter of fact, antique authors make no connection between the art and the beauteous, considering the beauteous under its general aspect, and without concrete determinations in relation to the idea of artistic creation. This explains why, later on, there appeared the notion of fine arts, meant to distinguish...
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