Based on Socrates’ account of the lesson he received from Diotima in The Symposium, Plato sees the pursuit of beauty as form as the best path to eudaimonia. Knowledge of impending death causes human beings exhibit all sorts of irrational and destructive behavior, mostly unconscious, in an effort to attain immortality through deeds and legacy building. Instead of pursuing the form of Beauty, we instead chase after lower forms that are mere reflections or poor substitutes for the source. As a result, we are often left feeling empty after achieving our goal which leads to more consuming and piling up of conquests. If however people could understand the true form of Beauty and pursue it instead, they could achieve true eudaimonia, instead of stumbling …show more content…
True beauty in its highest form is “…absolute, pure, unmixed, not polluted by human flesh or colors or any other great nonsense of mortality…” (211e1-2). The form of beauty therefore does not exist in a single person, idea or work of art but is beauty for its own sake, not in comparison to something else. This form transcends objects, space and time and therefore cannot be fully expressed in physical objects. Beautiful objects such as works of art or beautiful people represent severely limited reflections of the true form of beauty. Think of how a distorted mirror image reflects a physical object: beautiful at some angles while ugly from others. If all one knows is the distorted reflection one could hardly be blamed for falling in love with it. However, if he ever beholds the true source, the object itself, he would never return to the reflection and would in fact find it horrifying. Such is the relationship between beauty as form and the lesser, subjective beauty of physical …show more content…
The first step is desire for a beautiful body. From a single beautiful body we discover that all beautiful bodies have the same beautiful nature. This realization leads us to the discover the internal beauty of the soul, giving far less importance to physical beauty. The beautiful soul inside of a less than beautiful body is far more desirable to the beautiful body with an ugly soul. The next logical step is to understand the law or customs that produced such a beautiful soul along with the systems of knowledge from which they came. Then knowledge itself and eventually beauty in its purest form; forever leaving behind the image in the distorted mirror. Just like in the example of the distorted mirror image, once the source is the discovered the images themselves become abhorrent. It is at this point that the person produces virtue in its truest form, producing works of knowledge and art that makes them achieve a certain kind of immortality like some of the great writers and thinkers from
...what one wants to see, but a reflection of what actually is there. A man can fool anyone, including himself, until, through his own eyes, he finds a reflection of his true self.
Defining Beauty for Men and Women in Portraiture ". A thing of beauty is a joy forever : It's loveliness increases ; it will never pass into nothingness. " What is a beauty? Seemingly a continually evolving and infinitely elusive ideal, mankind has been obsessed with the concept of beauty throughout the ages.
The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.
In “On beauty and Being Just” by Elanie Scarry she says “Beauty brings copies of itself into being. It makes us draw it, take pictures of it, or describes it to other people.”(pg. 1) When we see something we consider beautiful we can’t help but want to make it last forever. She argues that if we study beauty, the outcome of what we find could possibly be harmful and dangerous. When she writes in “On Beauty Being Wrong” she says that we make mistakes or are wrong in anyway about what we consider to be beautiful or not, that most of the time we are incorrect and make a mistake about it. She goes on to say in her writing that “A visual event may reproduce itself in the realm of touch.” (pg. 4) He says that “the simplest manifest of phenomenon is the everyday fact of staring. (pg. 5) She uses the example of a first glance at a bird. We want to duplicate it but not into a drawing or a poem or song, we simply want to just keep looking at it for as long as the bird will be there. “This replication in the realm of sensation can be carried out by a single perceiver across time or can instead entail a brief act of perception distributed across many
Throughout The Republic, Plato takes three approaches in his explanation of why the just person is happiest. The last two are mostly coherent; however, there are some flaws in his first argument. Plato makes a case for his ideal just state, but this state is impractical and unjust. Within the same argument, he also attempts to draw parallels between justice in the state and justice within individuals, which I find to be unconvincing.
The author applies sight and personification to accentuate the mirror’s roles. The declaimer of the poem says “I am silver and exact [and] whatever I see I swallow” (1, 20). The purpose of these devices is to convey the position of the mirror in the poem. As an inanimate object, the mirror is incapable of consuming anything but the appearances of entities. Furthermore, the glass’ role accentuates an inner mirror, the human mirror which does not forget instances of misery and contentment. According to Freedman, the mimicking image emulated by the mirror elicits “… a look for oneself inside” as observed from the life of the elderly woman in the sonnet (153). Moreover, as the woman looks into the lake, she commemorates her appealing and attractive and pleasant figure as a young girl. As time passes, the inevitability of old age knocks on the door of the woman, readily waiting to change the sterling rapturous lady perceived by many. One’s appearance can change; it is up to an individual to embrace it or reject it.
When it comes to Plato's Republic, there are a few distinctions that are used to describe its contents, those being appearance vs. reality, one vs. the many, and forms/ideals vs. physical objects.
As stated by ‘The Duchess’, Margaret Wolfe Hungerford’s famous quote “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” As a result, beauty can describe as an inspiring view present in everything that can be seen. To begin, beauty can be viewed in a building as large and extravagant as the white house to the small hometown market or even in the sight of a single flower to a field filled with a million flowers. Also, beauty can be seen in the sunrise over the peaks of the mountains and also in the sunset glowing across a calm lake surrounded by the bright colors of the fall trees. Furthermore, people have physical beauty, which can be found in a person’s features, figure, or complexion. In the poem “Beauty & Dress” by Robert Herrick he explains the beauty he sees in his wife. Herrick states,
In Book V of The Republic, Plato details the roles of women and children in a perfect society. He has a very different and almost controversial view than most people during his time. Most believed that women should be confined to the household and raising children because they were most suited for those sorts of jobs. However, Plato expresses just the opposite. He thinks that women and men are equal; therefore, they should perform the same jobs.
A story that can surpass generations impacts the minds of its thinkers during the time period in which it was produced, therefore giving it the ability to live on for hundreds of years. Many arguments get refuted back and forth, where this dialogue lives forever in the pages of various works. Multiple themes stay constant through this debates, which is usually because they are important to those that are discussing them. A topic point that is usually stressed is justice, which ties along to equality for women. Although many older works do not specify what they exactly think about the status of women, the details reveal what the authors truly believe.
actual image. The idea of beauty is all around us. It is what we look for in all aspects of life. It is
ways as I have explained in this essay. It is a fact that The Mirror
himself to divert from the real pursuit of beauty: Since beauty is one of the true
Philosophy is a subject where there is no sound answer or argument for any question. Plato's beliefs were created through educated assumptions and provide a valid argument. One can continue their journey on this Earth trying to finding true perfection, however the chances are very slim according to Philosophy. Rather, one should embark in a more adventurous journey, a journey into the mind since it is the only housing of true perfection. A journey into a Philo Sophia
Everyone living on this earth has a different idea or view about what beauty means, and what is beautiful. There are many beautiful things in this world. From the people that inhabit the earth, to the creations and inventions humans have produced, to the way that humans behave. Everyone sees beauty as something different, whether it's love and loving one another, or kindness, or even a specific person, place or thing. Defining beauty was difficult for me at first, but once I began to think about it, I understood it a little bit more.