Jowett: absolute beauty

Socrates   : I will tell you, imitating him in the same way as a while ago, that I may not use to you such harsh and uncouth words as he uses to me. For you may be sure, "Tell me, Socrates," he will say, "do you think it would be unjust if you got a beating for singing such a long dithyramb so unmusically and so far from the question ?" "How so ?" I shall say. "How so ?" he will say ; "are you not able to remember that I asked for the absolute beautiful, [292d] by which everything to which it is added has the property of being beautiful, both stone and stick and man and god and every act and every acquisition of knowledge ? For what I am asking is this, man : what is absolute beauty ? and I cannot make you hear what I say any more than if you were a stone sitting beside me, and a millstone at that, having neither ears nor brain." Would you, then, not be angry, Hippias, if I should be frightened and should reply in this way ? "Well, but Hippias said that this was the beautiful ; [292e] and yet I asked him, just as you asked me, what is beautiful to all and always." What do you say ? Will you not be angry if I say that ? GREATER HIPPIAS

Now I was in a great quandary at having to answer this question, and I thought that I was rightly served for having opened my mouth at all : I said however, They are not the same as absolute beauty, but they have beauty present with each of them. EUTHYDEMUS  

Soc. There is another point. I should not like us to be imposed upon by the appearance of such a multitude of names, all tending in the same direction. I myself do not deny that the givers of names did really give them under the idea that all things were in motion and flux ; which was their sincere but, I think, mistaken opinion. And having fallen into a kind of whirlpool themselves, they are carried round, and want to drag us in after them. There is a matter, master Cratylus  , about which I often dream, and should like to ask your opinion : Tell me, whether there is or is not any absolute beauty or good, or any other absolute existence ? CRATYLUS

"He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty (and this, Socrates, is the final cause of all our former toils) — a nature which in the first place is everlasting, not growing and decaying, or waxing and waning ; secondly, not fair in one point of view and foul in another, or at one time or in one relation or at one place fair, at another time or in another relation or at another place foul, as if fair to some and foul to others, or in the likeness of a face or hands or any other part of the bodily frame, or in any form of speech or knowledge, or existing in any other being, as for example, in an animal, or in heaven or in earth, or in any other place ; but beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which without diminution and without increase, or any change, is imparted to the ever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things. He who from these ascending under the influence of true love, begins to perceive that beauty, is not far from the end. And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is. This, my dear Socrates," said the stranger of Mantineia, "is that life above all others which man should live, in the contemplation of beauty absolute ; a beauty which if you once beheld, you would see not to be after the measure of gold, and garments, and fair boys and youths, whose presence now entrances you ; and you and many a one would be content to live seeing them only and conversing with them without meat or drink, if that were possible — you only want to look at them and to be with them. But what if man had eyes to see the true beauty — the divine beauty, I mean, pure and dear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality and all the colours and vanities of human life — thither looking, and holding converse with the true beauty simple and divine ? Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may. Would that be an ignoble life ?" SYMPOSIUM  

And an absolute beauty and absolute good ? PHAEDO  

Then may we not say, Simmias, that if, as we are always repeating, there is an absolute beauty, and goodness, and essence in general, and to this, which is now discovered to be a previous condition of our being, we refer all our sensations, and with this compare them — assuming this to have a prior existence, then our souls must have had a prior existence, but if not, there would be no force in the argument ? There can be no doubt that if these absolute ideas existed before we were born, then our souls must have existed before we were born, and if not the ideas, then not the souls. PHAEDO

There is nothing new, he said, in what I am about to tell you ; but only what I have been always and everywhere repeating in the previous discussion and on other occasions : I want to show you the nature of that cause which has occupied my thoughts, and I shall have to go back to those familiar words which are in the mouth of everyone, and first of all assume that there is an absolute beauty and goodness and greatness, and the like ; grant me this, and I hope to be able to show you the nature of the cause, and to prove the immortality of the soul. PHAEDO

Well, he said, then I should like to know whether you agree with me in the next step ; for I cannot help thinking that if there be anything beautiful other than absolute beauty, that can only be beautiful in as far as it partakes of absolute beauty — and this I should say of everything. Do you agree in this notion of the cause ? PHAEDO

The lovers   of sounds and sights, I replied, are, as I conceive, fond of fine tones and colors and forms and all the artificial products that are made out of them, but their minds are incapable of seeing or loving absolute beauty. THE REPUBLIC   BOOK V

And he who, having a sense of beautiful things has no sense of absolute beauty, or who, if another lead him to a knowledge of that beauty is unable to follow — of such a one I ask, Is he awake or in a dream only ? Reflect : is not the dreamer, sleeping or waking, one who likens dissimilar things, who puts the copy in the place of the real object ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

But take the case of the other, who recognizes the existence of absolute beauty and is able to distinguish the idea from the objects which participate in the idea, neither putting the objects in the place of the idea nor the idea in the place of the objects — is he a dreamer, or is he awake ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

Then those who see the many beautiful, and who yet neither see absolute beauty, nor can follow any guide who points the way thither ; who see the many just, and not absolute justice, and the like — such persons may be said to have opinion but not knowledge ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

The one love and embrace the subjects of knowledge, the other those of opinion ? The latter are the same, as I dare say you will remember, who listened to sweet sounds and gazed upon fair colors, but would not tolerate the existence of absolute beauty. THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

You recognize the truth of what I have been saying ? Then let me ask you to consider further whether the world will ever be induced to believe in the existence of absolute beauty rather than of the many beautiful, or of the absolute in each kind rather than of the many in each kind ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

And there is an absolute beauty and an absolute good, and of other things to which the term "many" is applied there is an absolute ; for they may be brought under a single idea, which is called the essence of each. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI