Plato and Aristotle on Beauty and Art

Plato and Aristotle’s vision of beauty reflects their individual philosophy of life and is summed up well by Rafael’s classic fresco painting of the Platonic academy in the Vatican. While Plato points upward to the heavens and the realm of the eternal Good, Aristotle, and his pupil gestures downward to the earth, the realm of man.

 It is essential to the understanding of Plato’s ideas on Beauty to understand that he put forward first and foremost a hierarchy of Being. The Good being the ultimate cause, from which all things have their being,

"knowable things do not derive from the Good only their knowability, but also their existence and their essence, although the Good is not essence, but in dignity and power is even above Essence."

Republic. VI. 509

"... But I believe it to be thus: that in the intelligible world the Idea of the Good is the highest and the most difficult to discern; but once it is discerned it is necessary to conclude that it is for all the cause of everything good and beautiful because in the visible world it has generated the light and the Lord of the light, and in the intelligible world, where it equally rules, it has produced truth and intelligence... "

Republic, VII, 51

Being the ultimate, Plato saw this as the highest state to which a human could aspire. In the Republic Plato describes the famous analogy of the cave. Like Malevich’s paintings, in which, "all reference to ordinary objective life has been left behind and nothing is real except... the feeling of non-objectivity." Malevich

Plato’s ascent from the shadows of imagination also leaves behind "the visible world" until all forms, including the individual, dissolve in the sun itself, the Good. Much like the square merging in the expanse of white in Malevich’s White on white.

 Around and from Plato’s absolute Good, are arranged and proceed forth its qualities, its "ideal forms": "... the equal in itself, the beautiful in itself... that is, Being... is not each of these absolute realities, being uniform in itself, always identical to itself.."

Phaedo 79a

Plato states the purest and closest to "the Good", infact the closest defining characteristics to it, as the Good is inexpressible and beyond definition, is firstly moderation then beauty, proportion and truth.

"Therefore if we are unable to net the good in a single concept, we must use three to capture it, namely beauty, proportion and truth.

... . goodness has somehow been caught above all in moderation and what is moderate, ordered and so on... .Then again its second domain is proportion, beauty, perfection, sufficiency and everything of this kind." Philebus 65a-66a

 Beyond these are the essences of all created forms or Ideas as Plato puts them. It is important to note though that they are not ideas as in mental constructs, but self-existent realities:

"it is clear that things themselves must contain in themselves their own permanent essence. They do not depend upon us, nor are they pulled up or down by our imagination, but they exist by themselves, according to their own essence, as they are by nature." Cratylus 386e

 These eternal essences, are the causal forms of all mental and physical forms. This realm of Ideas is the realm of Being, here things are causal and eternal, below this is the realm of Becoming. Here dwell all mortal forms, mental and physical. Being created they always die, and constantly move between the two. "the old worn out mortality leaving another new and similar existence behind-unlike the divine, which is always the same and not another? And in this way, Socrates, the mortal body, or mortal anything, partakes of immortality". Thus they are always Becoming. Becoming participates in the reality of Being, but it is not pure Being. Beyond both of these is the Good, cause of both the intelligible world and the visible.

 To Plato it is the Good, which is essentially beautiful. "Beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting", is the radiance of this Good or as the sculptor Leonard McComb stated "the celebration of God’s radiance". This Beauty, "in every form, is one and the same", unaltered by human perception or opinion.

 In the Symposium Plato elaborates on Beauty, describing it is the goddess of creation, Aristotle on the other hand places reason as the cause of creation, with no mention of beauty.

"Beauty then, is the destiny or goddess of parturition who presides at birth, and therefore, when approaching beauty, the conceiving power is propitious, and diffusive and benign, and begets and bears fruit: at the sight of ugliness she frowns and contracts and has a sense of pain and turns away." Symposium

 For Aristotle "Reason forms the starting point, alike in the works of art and in works of nature." Parts of Animals Book

It is the basis upon which anything can be created. In Aristotle’s thought we see a negation of the divine creative power and the need for man to rely on this and instead the power of creation being put in man’s mind.

"Art is identical with a capacity to make, involving a true course of reasoning. All art is concerned with coming into being, i.e., with contriving and considering how something may come into being which is capable of either being or not being, and whose origin is in the maker and not in the thing made... .. Art, then as has been said, is a state concerned with making, involving a true course of reasoning, and lack of art on the contrary is a state concerned with making, involving a false course of reasoning; both are concerned with the variable." Nicomachean Ethics Book 7.10&20

 A similar difference can be seen in the work of Chuck Close and Vija Celmins. Close’s work speaks of the conquering of vision by reason. His large scale, systematic techniques and human focused subject matter, form a closed circuit for the vision. One is inundated by the immensity of the human mind and its total control of vision. Man being the prime mover and shaker throughout the image. Celmins on the other hand, speaks of the infinity of vision and nature. The vision being lost in the vast depth of space, desert or water. Throughout all her images one is aware of the immanent sense of infinity unconquered by thought.

 As Plato’s seeker dissolves into beauty itself, so to does the viewer become absorbed in Celmin’s formless vastness. This ascension towards a pure contemplation of "beauty everywhere" is described later in the Symposium;

 "These are the lesser mysteries of love, ... ..For he who would proceed aright in this matter should begin in youth to visit beautiful forms; and first... .to love one such form only... . soon he will of himself perceive... ..that the beauty in every form is one and the same ... ..and will become a lover of all beautiful forms; in the next stage he will consider that the beauty of the mind is more honourable than the beauty of the outward form. ... . until he is compelled to contemplate and see the beauty of institutions and laws, and to understand that the beauty of them all is of one family, and that personal beauty is a trifle; and after laws and institutions he will go on to the sciences, that he may see their beauty,... .. and at last the vision is revealed to him of a single science, which is the science of beauty everywhere... ... 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 towards the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty... a nature which in the first place is everlasting, not growing and decaying... ..secondly, not fair in one point of view and foul in another... ..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... .. 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... ... 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... ... I try to persuade others, that in the attainment of this end human nature will not easily find a helper better than love."

 The paintings of Mark Rothko also create a sense of luminous grandeur and emptiness akin to Plato’s vision of beauty, a vision that demands ones complete absorption within it. The austere simplicity of form and brilliance of colour reflect the gradual stripping away of diversity at each successive stage, until one goes beyond the formal qualities entirely.

"I am not interested in relationships of colour or form or anything else.. I am interested only in expressing the basic human emotions - tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on-and the fact that lots of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I communicate with those basic human emotions. The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their colour relationships, then you miss the point."

(S.Rodman, Conversations with Artists. New York. 1957)

 It is important to note that throughout the ascension to beauty itself, Socrates states; "human nature will not easily find a helper better than love." Love, for Plato, is the key to an understanding of true beauty. Diotima was an "instructress in the art of love" and their discussion begins with questions on the nature of Love. Love is described as a "great God", "like all spirits he is intermediate between the divine and the mortal", interpreting "between gods and men".

But the Love "is not, as you imagine, the love of the beautiful only. "

But; "The love of generation and of birth in beauty... . to the mortal creature, generation is a sort of eternity and immortality... . love is of the everlasting possession of the good, all men will necessarily desire immortality together with good: Wherefore love is of immortality. "

 To Plato all humankind desire’s for immortality and this is satisfied in a sense by creation, which is seen as a continuing of oneself. Whether it be the creation of children or art, "for there certainly are men who are more creative in their souls than in their bodies". For this creative act human’s search for the beautiful, "that he may beget offspring-for in deformity he will beget nothing". This act is a desire to participate in immortality.

However, to truly create eternal beauty Plato puts forward that the soul must ascend to beauty itself. There partaking of beauty itself; "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".

 Thus for Plato the contemplation of beauty enables man to exist in the eternity of the cosmos. The practice of beauty, a religious experience, a prayer or meditation on ones infinite nature. As Sister Wendy Beckett states on the artistic practice of the photographer Garry Fabian Miller.

"Miller makes no secret of the fact that his art is a spiritual activity.

It is a form of prayer, and equally, paradoxically, a form of proclamation"

Contrasting with Plato, Aristotle believed beauty to be something rooted in an object, unlike Plato’s Beauty in the realm of Ideas. Aristotle considered beauty a function of form, grounded in an object or context, without an object it could not exist.

"Now since the good and the beautiful are different (for the former always implies conduct as its subject, while the beautiful is found also in motionless things)... The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness." Metaphysics Book 13. (107a.34 & 107b.1)

 The object while being the platform for beauty was also the cause of itself. Creation does not happen for the sake of immortality or the Good.

"the process of evolution is for the sake of the thing finally evolved, and not this for the sake of the process ... since ‘nature’ means two things, the matter and the form, of which the latter is the end, and since all the rest is for the sake of the end, the form must be the cause in the sense of ‘that for the sake of which’... . The necessary in nature, then, is plainly what we call by the name of matter, and the changes in it." Physics Book 2. (198b.16. 199a.6,15&31.. 200a.30)

 Too both Aristotle and Plato, like most of the ancient world, order or a proportion of parts was a key factor in beauty. "Soc: In every case, however, moderation and proportion seem, in effect, to be beauty and excellence." Philebus 64e

And Aristotle; ‘the main qualities of beauty are orderly arrangement, proportion, and definiteness,’ However, for Aristotle this "order in its arrangement of parts" exists in a relationship between several parts, one to another, i.e. in complex objects only. In contrast to Plato where beautiful objects, "are not relatively beautiful, but are so in their own right." Not to mention the fact that Plato’s ultimate understanding of beauty is of a "beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting," not reliant in any way upon the arrangement of matter, but on the contrary bringing forth matter and bestowing upon it order. In Aristotle’s thought, the quality of beauty arises out the relationship of matter, one part to another, it is intertwined with form.

 Jon Groom’s discussion on the geometry in his paintings, would have appealed to Plato’s sensibilities for order and proportion:

"The geometry is the vehicle that carries the message, its simplicity and directness embrace another value; getting beyond the physical to reach a higher plane."

In the "visible world Plato too looks towards geometry as a means for reaching a "higher plane", these "pure" forms, are not "relatively" beautiful, but "beautiful in any situation". In essence forms which partake of the Ideas, the realm of Being.

" Protarchus: Well, which pleasures would it be right to consider as true, Socrates?

Socrates: Those which have to do with the colours we call beautiful, with figures, with most scents, with musical sounds: in short, with anything which, since it involves imperceptible, painless lack, provides perceptible, pleasant replenishment which is uncontaminated by pain... .. By ‘beauty of figures’ I mean... not what most people would consider beautiful... the figures of creatures in real life or in pictures... . I mean a straight line, a curve and the plane and solid figures that lathes, ruler and squares can make from them... I mean that unlike other things, they are not relatively beautiful: their nature is to be beautiful in any situation, just as they are, and to have their own special pleasantness... . And I mean that there are colours, which are analogously beautiful and pleasant... . Well by musical sounds I mean unwavering, clear ones which produce a single pure phrase: they are not relatively beautiful, but are so in their own right, and they have innately attendant pleasures... .. whiteness: that even if slight in quantity, provided it is pure, it surpasses a large amount which is not pure, because it is the truest instance." Philebus 51a-58d

 The use of geometry with its unchanging mathematical perfection can be seen most obviously in the art of Piet Mondrian. His work encapsulates many of the forms Plato talks about, especially so-called sacred geometry like golden rectangles and proportions aswell as the pure, clear colours Plato affirms. More importantly his intention for using these forms, "the expression of pure reality," is entirely appropriate to Plato’s aims.

"I felt that this reality can only be established through pure plastics. In its essential expression, pure plastics is unconditioned by subjective feeling and conception. It took me a long time to discover that particularities of form and natural colour evoke subjective feeling, which obscure pure reality. The appearance of natural forms changes but reality remains constant. To create pure reality plastically, it is necessary to reduce natural forms to the constant elements of form and natural colour to primary colour. The aim is not to create other particular forms and colours with all their limitations, but to work toward abolishing them in the interest of a larger unity."

For Mondrian and Plato the value of geometry is its proximity to Ideal forms. The reduction Mondrian speaks of is an ascent to the Beautiful it’s excellence corresponding to its nearness to this Idea. However, for Plato, these physical geometric forms, i.e., a circle, will always fall short of the perfect reality of the Idea of Circle. This Idea, "Circle" or "circle-ness" itself is then subject to a higher order of Truth, Proportion and Beauty, then again to Moderation and finally to its ultimate cause the Good.

 Formalism along with its children Minimalism and Colour Field painting, also strove towards a priori form. Stripping away traditional religious, social, and representative subject matter, in a reductive quest for the elusive source of beauty, "significant form" as it was called. For some (i.e.: Newman and Rothko ) "significant form", was as Clive Bell described, the "expression of that emotion which is the vital force in every religion", for others plastic form in its purity held "significant form" in itself, without any reference to a transcendent source.Plato and Mondrian’s emphasis on a "constant reality" is quite different from Aristotle’s description of the everchanging nature of beauty of a man. Where Plato and Mondrian reject the beauty of natural forms Aristotle elaborates on man’s varying beauty, a beauty in constant flux.

"Beauty varies with the time of life. In a young man beauty is the possession of a body fit to endure the exertion of running and of contests of strength; which means that he is pleasant to look at; and therefore all-round athletes are the most beautiful... For a man in his prime, beauty is fitness for the exertion of warfare, together with a pleasant but formidable appearance. For an old man, it is to be strong enough for such exertion as is necessary, and to be free from all those deformities of old age which cause pain to others." Rhetoric Book 1. 1361b.8

Beauty in this sense is brilliantly captured by the fleeting creations of Andy Goldsworthy. His intricate creations convey the clarity and purity much loved by both Aristotle and Plato, but much of their beauty lies in their ephemerality and constantly changing relationships. This is most definitely a beauty intertwined with form.

 Beauty here stands on a different ground to Plato. It is not based on a "constant reality" but on its relevance and desirability. Later in the Rhetoric Aristotle declares anything as beautiful;

"which, being desirable in itself, is at the same time worthy of praise, or which, being good, is pleasant because it is good." Rhetoric

This begins to push beauty into the realm of "subjective feeling", there being no eternal basis for what is "desirable in itself".

In effect Aristotle does with these ideas what Pollock did with the action paintings. Where Formalism had eschewed subjective content as a means for "significant form", Pollocks paintings forced recognition that process and semiotic structure, as well as the aesthetic response and significant form, were subjects of aesthetic inquiry. A push back to the individuals subjective judgement.

Beauty, being reliant on form for Aristotle and subject to human desire necessarily demands that it is perceivable by humans, to exist.

"to be beautiful, a living creature, and every whole made up of parts, must not only present a certain order in its arrangement of parts, but also be of a certain definite magnitude. Beauty is a matter of size and order, and therefore impossible either in a very minute creature, since our perception becomes indistinct as it approaches instantaneity; or in a creature of vast size - one, say, 1,000 miles long - as in that case, instead of the object being seen all at once, the unity and wholeness of it is lost to the beholder.’ Poetics 1450b.35

Not only is a "definite magnitude’ necessary in order that something can be regarded as ‘beautiful’, beauty is infact "impossible" if it exceeds the bounds of our senses, or understanding. Beauty while being an objective quality based upon certain natural and lawful arrangements is nevertheless dependent on a human viewer to exist, one could even say it only exist in the human mind.

 This notion of the comprehensibility of beauty, and its finite nature bound to form is perhaps where Plato and Aristotle differ the most. While Aristotle places it in human hands, Plato’s Idea of Beauty constantly points at its infinite nature, its formlessness and mans inability to fully grasp it. While man and nature create Aristotle’s beauty, Plato’s Beauty creates man and nature.

"drawing towards and contemplating the vast sea of beauty... at last the vision is revealed to him of a single science, which is the science of beauty everywhere... ... when he comes towards the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty... a nature which in the first place is everlasting, not ... .in any form of speech or knowledge, or existing in any other being... .. or in heaven, or in earth... . 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 " The Symposium.