Beauty

It seems to me that whatever else is beautiful apart from absolute beauty is beautiful because it partakes of that absolute beauty, and for no other reason. Do you accept this kind of causality? Yes, I do. Well, now, that is as far as my mind goes; I cannot understand these other ingenious theories of causation. If someone tells me that the reason why a given object is beautiful is that it has a gorgeous color or shape or any other such attribute, I disregard all these other explanations—I find them all confusing—and I cling simply and straightforwardly and no doubt foolishly to the explanation that the one thing that makes the object beautiful is the presence in it or association with it, in whatever way the relation comes about, of absolute beauty.

I do not go so far as to insist upon the precise details—only upon the fact that it is by beauty that beautiful things are beautiful.

This, I feel, is the safest answer for me oranyone else to give, and I believe that while I hold fast to this I cannot fall; it is safe for me or for anyone else to answer that it is by beauty that beautiful things are beautiful.

- (Plato, Phaedo, 100c-e)

Don’t you agree? I do.