What Is Beauty? Essay, Research Paper
Page 1.
Hello, my dear friend!
Hello.
Do you remember the conversation that we had last night?
I do.
So, did you have enough time to think it over?
You mean the question?
Yes, the question about beauty.
Yes, I thought about it, and I will honestly tell you, that I don t know.
All right. Let s talk about it, if you don t mine?
Certainly.
Let s see. Let me ask you? Do you agree, that beauty is the one of the virtues that you have to love as whole, and not just some parts of it?
Please explain; I don t get it ..
Well, what would you consider beautiful?
Well I have always considered beautiful as something that is special and extraordinary. It is so different that it grabs your attention and you cannot stop looking at it. For example, you would look at the picture of the baby playing with the other kids, and you would think that it is beautiful picture. You would look at picture of the mother breastfeeding the baby, and you would think that it is beautiful. You would look at old church or cathedral in Rome, and you would think how magnificent and beautiful that building is.
So, do you think that all off the examples that you were just talking about represent one thing beauty, and they are just some aspects of it?
I m not sure. I think so.
Page2.
I think that you are missing a point. You are mistaking some beautiful things with the beauty itself.
Hold on. What do you mean by this?
It is like love. For example, you meet a beautiful girl. You start dating. You like her nature beauty, her looks and personality. But, one day you will fall in love. Love is a feeling that
is very hard to explain, but when you do love somebody, you know that you love somebody. You care about that person so much that you don t care about her nature beauty, looks or her personality. It s what inside, that is important. You now not only just like and admire her looks, you love that person in whole. For you that person will always will be the most beautiful human being that you have ever meat.
I see now.
Now, the problem is that not everybody can make the distinction between nature beauty and some
aspects of it. Do you agree?
I do.
But, what is amazing is that somebody s opinion about something being beautiful can make you
realize that something is, in fact, beautiful.
It is.
Do you remember that you used church as the example?
Of course, I do.
You have found that construction beautiful, right?
Yes. I did.
It s known that just because you had found it magnificent, somebody might or might not agree with you. Right?
Right .
So, you have to agree that it is nothing but your perception on what you might consider to be beautiful.
I agree.
Isn t real is opposite of unreal
Yes, it is.
So is it true that everything around us is real or not real?
Page 3.
I m not sure. Explain.
You have to agree that it just could be object of your imagination?
I think so.
So it could be real and unreal in the same time. True?
*[True,] it is impossible to form fixed idea of any of this things as either being what it is or not being what it is, or being both, or being neither ..
I agree. It is impossible. It is the knowledge of it is what is important. Right?
Absolutely.
Don t you just know when something is beautiful or not?
Yes, indeed.
So, then you have to agree that church that you were talking about before was build long before you were born.
Yes, it was.
Now. So it is safe to say that that church was considered beautiful long before you were born. Right?
I agree.
Answer this. Does beauty have time limit on it? Or it has always being beautiful, and will be always considered beautiful?
Yes, indeed. It doesn t have time limit on it?
So it is safe to say that it was beautiful before it was build since it doesn t have a time frame on it?
It s confusing.
I know it is. But, think about it.
You right. It is safe to say that.
That is my point. Beauty is there, regardless whether you find it beautiful or not. Right?
Yes it is.
Page4.
That is my point. Beauty is bigger then time or human life. It can only come from Good. * In the intelligible realm, the Form of the Good is the last thing to be seen [by the mind], and it is reached only with the great difficulty. Once one has seen it, however, one must also see that the Good is the source all that is true and beautiful in anything, that it creates the sun and its light, and that it is also the source of all truth and knowledge in intelligible realm.
What is knowledge?
I m glad you asked that. It is ..
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* is from Plato s Republic