well greetings to you all watching this lecture on the um third Century thinker philosopher platinus as we talk about his work in his a need 1.6 which we are entitling and which is generally entitled his work on beauty platinus himself is a third Century philosopher he lives around the time of 205 to 270 A.D which as we should know is that you know a strong point at the height of Roman Empire let's say and he is often noted as being the founder of what's called neoplatonism now that particular word neoplatonism is really something of a 19th century invention it's not uh something that he himself would have would have used to talk about his specific uh world view or or the specific category of thinkers that is namely Plato where he's coming from um but nonetheless right so it's a little bit anachronistic but nonetheless it well describes where he's coming from he is someone that sought to interpret and apply Plato's thought um Plato having lived about 500 years earlier so think about how interesting this is right he's he's a thinker he's very influential it's at the height of the Roman Empire he is reaching back to Plato thinks that Plato has a basic understanding of how the world works and is trying to take that and apply it now to a new setting into a new context to one that is highly developed at least more so than back then in terms of all the things that are brought about by Empire at that time he's born in Egypt he studied at Alexandria for a long time and they spent the rest of his time his life in Rome itself at the at the core or the capital of the Empire teaching mentoring writing a lot of stuff and so it becomes a very influential thinker um there are three basic aspects of plutonus's view of reality and this is you know not the easiest stuff to grasp he's very abstract um Plato's not the easiest to grasp either as we have found out but uh but I think we can summarize sort of his basic view about all of reality in this way that first of all there's this thing called the one now he doesn't really think that you can give a concrete definition of what that is uh except just to say that it is that divine power that is fundamental to everything that there is it is the most fundamental the most foundational thing that there is of all that exists it's transcends uh Human Experience it transcends the human ability to see it or sense it let's say it even transcends human ability to understand it fully but it is the good it is that to which everything is directed it is that that gives everything its um it's life force let's say that gives it its existence that gives it uh the form the specific form as to what it actually is um any concrete thing any material things um so so the one is just that we might even say that the one is kind of like God to platinous in a sense although that would not necessarily be completely accurate it might not be a bad way of at least thinking about it very generally in terms of how he thinks or what he thinks the one is but right under the one there is what he calls the intellect and the intellect itself is really an intellectual sphere it's not necessarily the intellect that you or I have or the capacity for the intellect that you or I have but the intellect itself is a realm or is a sphere that also transcends Human Experience but it's within that realm that we have all of the forms and of course for Plato right what the forms are are the ultimate realities of everything if I have a triangle on the board here and I wrote one on the board and you can't see it but I have one here that's a copy really of a triangle it's it's not the triangle it's a copy of the triangle the triangle itself or the definition of triangle being a form that exists in the realm of forms that transcends us right up in the sky somewhere uh I could say you know not literally up on the sky somewhere but but transcending us above us in some other dimension that's where all of the forms are so that's the realm of the intellect and then a little bit more down to earth uh pun intended here is the soul and the soul is that which contemplates the one and the intellect the soul is that which uh reaches out in a sense and desires to understand or desires to connect to and commune with the one and the intellect the soul itself being the mind or our mind your mind right so this is this is basically what drives platitis's thought now what we want to do as we do in all of these lectures is go through these readings and then highlight the the main points of argument here to try to understand what's going on well in chapter one of uh platinus's work on beauty he raises this problem it's a very interesting problem it's simply this that there are all kinds of things in the world that have Beauty right we might say that some people are beautiful um indeed he gives them examples here of sights Melodies cadences all kinds of sounds songs beautiful landscapes beautiful paintings but also in some sense too he says that there are certain actions that people do that we can call beautiful or character or Pursuits of their intellect virtues right these kinds of things we could say are beautiful okay that's great so what is it that makes those things beautiful if something is beautiful what makes it beautiful what's the quality or the characteristic let's say or the attribute or maybe we're totally off base maybe it's nothing like that that makes you beautiful maybe it's something else that makes it beautiful right what is that specific thing that does it so with these examples here we know that uh or platinus notes that there are sort of lower order and loftier higher order kinds of beauty right if if there's a beautiful site let's say that we enjoy that's great but seems like also if we were to talk about somebody's character as being beautiful that would be something of a higher order than a mere painting would be so all these things are now raised we want to know what is it that makes beautiful things beautiful um how do we differentiate between lower order and higher order beauty is there a relation to all this does this impose obligations um or duties on us as a result of this right what's what's going on here and and to some extent platinus is going to answer all of those questions uh by the end of this reading well we also know then that just like there are some things that are beautiful not everything is some material or physical things communicate this quality of beauty but some don't so what then is it that shows itself in these forms what is it that makes beautiful things beautiful now one of the main ways in which people would answer this question at the time of platinus apparently is by saying that well what it is that makes something beautiful what gives it that attractiveness and beauty is the symmetry of pattern that it has so when I when I read this I think about you know platinus being at the height of Empire and I think about various structures and various uh uh human artifacts that come out of the Empire Era like the Coliseum like the Roman Arch like the aqueduct even like the the roads and you think about how very hardcore how strict they were about making sure that everything was symmetrical that everything was perfectly built and shaped and structured and even and level and you know on and on we can go uh regarding um how sophisticated and frankly how wonderful and great building methods were but even the aesthetic aspects of those like that Roman Arch where you've got this perfect arch that's symmetrical on both sides where you have these aqueducts that have such asymmetry to how they are engineered for water to flow out of mountains and end up in in cities that might even be you know 30 40 50 60 miles away from where the water source is so this this notion of symmetry um itself says kind of rules the day I mean this is in some sense a really important just virtue of of human artifact construction frankly so no doubt this would be a big deal yeah it's symmetry why is it that somebody's face is beautiful well because it's symmetrical why is it that this Bust or sculpture of of a past Emperor is beautiful well because it's symmetrical um why is it that this landscape that I'm painting that is beautiful well because of the symmetry of everything that is being represented here regarding the particular scene that it's trying to represent so we can see an example of that here obviously to the I or at least platinus thinks anyway that it's obvious to your eye or rather I should say that those who think that symmetry is the thing that makes beautiful things beautiful what they would think is that obviously to your eye the reason why the one on the left here is more beautiful or has more Beauty to it than the one on the right is because of its symmetry right we have perfect symmetry one half is a mirror image to the other half regarding the image on the left but on the right there's asymmetry so not as good looking let's say well platinus thinks however that that particular answer is wrong that it's not a good answer to the question what is it that makes beautiful things beautiful the first problem he notes is this because if we say that symmetry is what makes beautiful things beautiful then this implies that only compounds can be beautiful since symmetry itself would imply a pattern among all parts of a thing so simply put um if something is beautiful because it's symmetric then it has to be a compound of various parts put together and we can kind of see that here right look at the one on the on the left it's symmetric because uh the part on the left mirror images the part on the right that's a problem because not everything is made up of parts and the simple things like color he says or the light of the Sun or even just a single note not an entire chord of three notes on the piano for instance but even a single note we would not be able to call those things beautiful since they're simple things they're not made up of parts but we know better right we know that very simple things things that are just simply one and not complex uh made up of complex Parts um can be beautiful also so this would not help us to describe why those things are beautiful that is why the simple things are beautiful problem two rhetorical question he asks furthermore isn't it true that someone's face might have the exact symmetry from one day to the next and yet appear sometimes fair right or beautiful I should say and sometimes not probably so probably so maybe somebody's face looks kind of good to you one day and maybe not so much the next day whereas the Symmetry uh from one half to to the on one half to the other half or the symmetry of the eyes or the nose and the mouth or whatever right the ears uh has not changed whatsoever and yet there's something else going on there isn't it so there's one example to show why he thinks that the Symmetry is not a good way to answer this question problem three what about beautiful things like noble conduct or excellent laws or good mental Pursuits or even points of abstract thought these are beautiful things in incredibly so in the sense of if we think about how Aristotle would argue about excellent laws for instance and Noble conduct how that they make your community good how that they help your community achieve a sense of flourishing um how do you point out the symmetry of something like that it doesn't really make sense because indeed these aren't material kinds of things frankly right they're more conceptual so how do you apply symmetry to conceptual things conceptual materials like this that are still beautiful seemed it would seem to be something of a category mistake so symmetry itself is just a bad way to think about what makes beautiful things beautiful um problem four another rhetorical question what about the Symmetry that there is between ugly propositions this is an interesting way of putting it so what he has in mind here about ugly propositions are are statements you know just statements that would cohere together but are talking about uh awful kinds of things or ugly kinds of things um I could use a very simple example here what about the ugly proposition that says uh I will steal money from the grocery store next door and then another proposition that says I will steal money from the elderly Neighbor Next Door okay so two statements that are expressing some very awful evil immoral ugly content talking about theft but those two statements would cohere together that is they don't contradict one another um uh there's no conflict between them um where you would have conflict is if I were to make two statements uh one of them being I'm going to steal from the grocery store next door and then maybe another statement saying that I believe that stealing is morally wrong well you can't hold both of those statements together because they would off they would definitely contradict one another but the original two set that I had about stealing from my neighbor and then the other one about stealing from the grocery store there's symmetry there there's coherence between those statements um so because there's symmetry then the both of those statements are beautiful right well no right so you can even have symmetry between things that are ugly to some extent so another problem with symmetry as an answer to this question well the fifth problem he notes about symmetry consider that all the virtues are a beauty of the Soul Beyond any of these others but such virtues cannot have the symmetry of size or number since no standard of measurement could be used to determine this kind of related to our earlier problem regarding uh conceptual things like normal conduct excellent laws good mental Pursuit here the question is of all the beauties that there are of one soul that is where they're expressing virtue and exercising virtue and all of that sort of thing how do you how would you actually measure that um symmetry itself implies that it's measurable at least observe a measurable through observation but you really don't have any standard of measurement to measure the beauty of a virtue compared to other kinds of things so that's a problem and then the sixth problem as he puts it this Theory could not explain the beauty of the intellectual principle itself and of course this kind of goes back to something we noted on an earlier slide regarding his basic view of of reality and of the world um if beauty is is to be understood and described solely in terms of symmetry that would not be able to explain why Beauty itself is beautiful um that is the beauty of the one realm where Beauty itself exists as a defined form that gives beauty or that that sets the standard for beauty itself which itself is beautiful there's no way to check its symmetry there you would have to be speculated I suppose um but even at that it's just it would not be a helpful way to think about it so symmetry is a problem well what's a better way than to think about what it is that makes beautiful things beautiful and what platinus says is that it's a principle which exists and is perceived at first glance and is from ancient knowledge so let's break that down uh to sort of get at what he's talking about here to say that it's a principle really is to say that it is um how do I want to put this that it's really part of the furniture of the world right it's it's a principle of reality itself um it's it it's not the sort of uh principle that we can create or do away with um it's really built into the framework of the world it's it's it's a real category that already exists um absolutely so and universally so so it's this it's this principle of reality which itself exists and that's that's what he's getting at here right it's a principle of reality that itself is real is perceived at first glance so he thinks that it's intuitive um in other words there's something about it such that uh our our minds our soul we connect to it uh when we see beauty we know it type of thing so we perceive it and we can put it this way too along those lines in a sense we could say that we're programmed I'm using some modern language here to try to explain these ideas but to say the proceeding at first glance would imply that we're sort of programmed or our minds are or our souls are programmed to recognize Beauty and it's a very old kind of thing as he says from an ancient knowledge um which goes along with this right it's it's a knowledge that we could say and I'll use some later thinkers terminology here to kind of explain what I think platinus means is that it's something that is that is already uh part of the structure or framework of our minds it's a knowledge that's already implanted it's a category that's already implanted in the structure of our minds um so it's a knowledge that's already there at least in terms of the knowledge of recognizing Beauty when indeed we do see it well how does this work then give us a little bit of a uh a technical description of how this works and he says it works in this way the soul right which is the mind that's what the Ancients mean by by the Mind by the very truth of its nature right so the nature of my mind so getting at what I've already talked about there's a structure to my mind my mind is already programmed it recognize things in certain ways so by the very truth of its nature so by Nature my mind by its affiliation to the noblest existence and the hierarchy of being right some really weird language there but basically what he's saying is because my mind is Affiliated or it's connected to the noblest of all things that exist which what is the noblest of all things that exist well it's the one it's the good it's the it's the realm of the intellect as well it's the forms right so it's the really real stuff that transcends human comprehension and human human perception um which is at the Apex those things at the apex of the hierarchy of being right of all things that that are real and that exist it's those Transcendent Realms that are at the Apex of that hierarchy they're at the top so my soul by its own nature My Mind by Nature in being affiliated with having some sense of the hierarchy of being of those forms when it sees anything of that kin that is when I when my soul observes or perceives I guess through my eyeballs I'll use this example through my eyeballs this beautiful painting it Thrills with an immediate Delight because it recognizes something about that painting that is connected to the noblest things that exist on the realm of the forms it's making some kind of connection there and he says it Thrills with an immediate Delight I don't know how true that is I don't go running around jumping around and saying I'm having an immediate Delight because I see something beautiful right that never happens I promise you but I suppose this is sort of a more exaggerated way of saying that that it does delight in some way with appreciation for seeing something beautiful um foreign so there's some type of connection there some type of recollection there when that happens in other words they're put differently then whatever loveliness of this world that I experience right what he calls the beauty that's here right in front of me when that beauty comes by communion and ideal form that is it communes with the form of beauty that is out there somewhere that is transcendent to me it's doing this by communicating in the thought that flows from the Divine which is the arch type of beauty right the ultimate form of beauty even maybe the one in the good so in a sense then what's going on is that what makes the thing that I'm looking at beautiful is that my soul is recognizing that that thing communes with in some sense the Divine form of beauty so my eyes are connecting to this object my mind is interpreting that object and my mind then is also simultaneously connecting to the Divine form of beauty my mind then is making the connection between the object and the definition of beauty itself in a sense that I'm like a middleman here I'm like a middle person um uh completing the connection between the object and Beauty itself at least in terms of my recognition of it so really what I'm doing is I'm making this sort of rational correspondence between the object and the form of beauty that transcends me right it's in the it's in the realm of beauty the realm of the form is the realm of the intellect it exists way out there somewhere and the only access that I have to it is through the rational working of my mind itself I don't see that realm I don't see those forms I don't see the definition of beauty itself I can only see it in a sense metaphorically with my mind I can only connect to it with the powers and abilities of my mind right that is my soul and as well Titus will put it this explanation applies both to Singularity so things like a like one thing like a beautiful stone as well as unity's of various parts things like houses that have all kinds of various parts to them and aspects of them I can call the house a beautiful thing because as with the stone I'm connecting what I'm seeing to the form of beauty itself and I'm realizing that there's a one-to-one correlation there that yes this does represent in some important sense the realm of beauty as a realm of the form so what is an ugly thing or what makes an ugly thing ugly well The Logical implication is that it's the opposite of this because that matter that physical stuff that I'm observing let's say let's say the same looking at another painting now that that is not yielding at all points and in all respects to the ideal form of beauty it's not making the connection to it it's not representing that form of Beauty in the right kind of way or in an accurate kind of way and thus it's ugly so uh so as subsets we can we can literally say that for platinus then what makes an ugly thing ugly is that it doesn't have any beauty it's it's it would almost be akin to defining what darkness is what is Darkness what's the absence of light what is ugliness well it's the absence of beauty in chapter 3 then of this work well Titus goes on to note that one soul is able to do this kind of work it's able to do this kind of rational operation because it has a faculty peculiarly peculiarly addressed to beauty that is it has something about it that is able to do this type of thing it has this faculty it has this capacity for doing this but how can there be accordance between the material and that which antidates all matter another important question that is how can there be this community or this connection this accordance between the physical material stuff that I observe and that I see and this ideal form that exists out there that itself anti-dates that it comes before all matters it's always existed eternally it's of a different kind of thing it's non-material it's it's spiritual in a sense so how can spiritual interact with things that are non-spiritual with things that are physical and material well plotitis doesn't think that this is that big of a problem in some sense because think about for instance his example how Architects do their work Architects will Design Homes and they design them in their mind and then they'll put the design down on paper and in the actual home or the house will get built and after the house gets built they will say ah this state is beautiful but on the basis of what at what point can they declare the physical thing itself to be beautiful well they can do it on the basis of the inner ideal of a house that they have and what is that inner idea what's the idea that they have in their mind about this kind of thing and so just like that our perceptive faculty is able to discern certain objects in this ideal form of beauty that is our mind is able to discern what those are from the form itself the ideal form of beauty itself and then present it to the ideal Principle as something concorded congenial a natural friend he says so the principle of what makes beautiful things beautiful right we can compare these kinds of things and then exercise that principle the things that we kind of make or the kinds of things that we're able to make because we're able to connect that to the ideal form itself thank you and then in chapters four and five latinus goes on but beyond beautiful objects perceived by the senses there are also earlier and loftier ones which are known only via the soul we've talked a little bit about these already things like noble conduct or learning or virtue or Justice or moral wisdom and it seems like to perceive these things with the soul then would be to move into the realm of Truth he says such that those that are more truly apt to this Higher Love are true lovers in other words it's it's it's great to be able to appreciate material things that themselves are beautiful but remember what he said earlier there's a hierarchy there's loftier beautiful things and lesser beautiful things and the loftier the higher ones are things like this right good behavior Good Conduct virtue Justice wisdom right these these are just of a greater kinds of quality of beautiful things Apple Titus wants to make a very interesting and Stark statement about this that is that when we appreciate the beauty of these kinds of things we're moving it into a different realm of existence or a different realm of reality in some sense we're at a greater reality among the things we experience with these kinds of things because with these kinds of things we can talk about truth in a different kind of way and so to appreciate this kind of Truth and to live in this kind of Truth where we appreciate the beauty of these kinds of things um we're more apt than do appreciate and to experience what he wants to call true love laughs excuse me I had a little cough there we want to move on this realm now of what he calls true love not Hollywood and Disney teenie bopper movie kinds of uh perceptions of love but something much more fundamental to him and for him this notion of true love that is awoken by the beauties of what he calls loftiness of spirit righteousness of Life disciplined Purity courage of the Majestic face gravity modesty that goes fearless and tranquil and passionless and Shining down upon all the light of god-like interlection right so incredible here incredible way of thinking about this and talking about this and these kinds of things are very abstract aren't they though and they're very they're very conceptual so how is it that these kinds of things can be beautiful well it just gives a very simple answer he says they're beautiful because they exist in other words what he's assuming here is that they have inherent Beauty their their beauty is not attributed to them by necessarily how they communed with the ideal form I mean that there is a part of it that's true but even more so apparently for him right these things uh connect to it in such a way that the beauty itself almost is inherently part of these kinds of things so they simply exist they manifest themselves to us such that anyone this excuse me anyone that sees them must admit that they have reality of being and as he puts it it's not real being really beautiful I mean it's not reality itself to its greatest extent just inherently automatically beautiful because of how it's so real it's not been affected by any Corruption of ugliness whatsoever which for him is the opposite of reality right it's non-existence if it has no corruption like that but it is fully real and fully existent that it is fully beautiful so now we ask the question what is ugliness what is ugliness we have a sense of this already as understood as the opposite of beauty but for uh for platitis there's also a moral sense that connects to this as well as to understanding what ugliness is and as he puts it an ugly soul is one that is teeming with all the lusts torn by internal Discord be set by the fears of its cowardice and the envies of its pettiness thinking and the little thought that it has only of the perishable and the base perverse in all its impulses a friend of unclean Pleasures living the life of Abandonment to bodily sensation and delighting in its deformity occupied always in matter and absorbing matter into itself in its Commerce with the ignoble it has trafficked away for an alien nature its own essential idea wow right an amazing paragraph there so when he talks about a person's soul that's ugly really what he's talking about here is not so much the the quality of how the soul looks but what he's talking about isn't he here it has to do with what that Soul desires what it wants how it operates what it's um what its desires are and what what its Cravings are and frankly the way that he's putting it is that it's a soul is one that an ugly soul is the one that really is just driven by uh Vice it's driven by satisfying bodily appetites lust let's say by the vices of cowardice and by envies envinists envying of others in Petty ways um always concerned with what is merely material or what is merely physical abandoning itself to bodily sensation so doing whatever makes the body feel good uh as some of the old timers would put it sex drugs and rock and roll right this is this is what an ugly soul is one that is deformed because it's always occupied and absorbed with itself it's absorbed with physical stuff physical pleasure satisfying these physical kinds of appetites and he says that an ugly soul like this what it has done is it is trafficked away that is it to sort of abandon itself or given itself away to an alien nature in other words this this nature of always Desiring to fulfill one's physical wants and desires and lust itself is not the true nature of the soul the true nature of the soul is to live more in line with the good with the one to be in harmony with that not to be completely absorbed in physical aspects of life well how does an ugly soul get ugly then how does it happen that that happens in that way as platinus Will Go On To Say by something foisted upon it not upon but upon it sorry for that typo by stinking itself into the alien by a fall a descent into body into manner um somehow or another somewhat gets uh wrapped up in merely being concerned with um uh fulfilling all of one's physical appetites by thinking that the Physical Realm and which ones lives that you see touched hear taste and smell that that's all there is to reality and that's all that exists and just absorbing yourself into that the example he gives that is just like gold itself is degraded that is it becomes less valuable when that gold is mixed with Earthly particles with all other kinds of elements that aren't gold so too he says the soul works that way or becomes ugly in that way by its two intimate converse with the body two connected to physical stuff too absorbed with physical stuff so then what should we do how should we respond to that he says be purified let your soul be cleared of those desires emancipated from all the passions purged of all that embodiment has thrust upon it withdrawn a solitary to itself again in other words sort of come back to its nature is what he says since then a pure soul that is pure and that is separate from all of this is all idea and reason right it's it's in contact with it it communes with the intellect and the forms and the one right it's it's all idea it's all reason and it's and it's free from body it's wholly free from the material world in some sense and entirely of that divine order from which the Wellspring of beauty Rises a beautiful soul is itself the heightened is itself heightened to the intellectual principle which is native to it um it it's in itself sees the the realm of the intellect sees the realm of the good let's say in that direction it's it's pointed in that way it is in communion with that it is connected to that it is uh it has a uh one-to-one corresponding pipeline connected to that because that is what's native to the soul we might say in a sense for platitis then that's what the soul is made for it's made to have that kind of community communion with the intellect not so much with the material world in which we live so as a result then for platinus we see the unity in these concepts of beauty and ugliness Beauty equals authentic real existence anything that is really really real is beautiful and Beauty itself comes from that which is really really real I mean Beauty itself is that which is really really real and will lend itself in some way to material things that take on its characteristic of beauty but the material things themselves are not beautiful in and of themselves they're beautiful only insofar as they connect to they commune with the ideal form of beauty itself which is the utter reality beyond the world in which we live in terms of our sense perceptions and that is in line with the good but ugliness itself right being the opposite of beauty really that is the opposite of existence if beauty is something that's really real and and ugliness is something that is understood as not having reality to it and thus it's what makes it ugly the ugliness itself is contrary to existence and for platitis is a primal evil so what should be our response we must Ascend again he says towards the good to attain it for those that will take the upward path who will set all their forces toward it who will divest themselves of all that we have put on in our descent that is an artist set down into the world of matter and physical stuff which we are tempted to do attempted to not work on and cultivate our minds in the intellectual capacity of our minds to connect to and to enjoy the communion with the intellect uh itself that is the realm of the intellect where Beauty itself exists right so uh so there's a moral duty he thinks that is uh implied by all of this well how do we do this this is the final final part of his piece here how is it that people can actually do this he says we must be strong to run away from the material Beauty that once made our joy and then flee to the Beloved Fatherland which is a interesting way to put it but in talking about it the realm of the forms and the realm of the intellect and and being one or our soul itself becoming pure calling it The Fatherland really means that in a sense we're returning to where we came from going back to to what created us to begin with returning to our origin so if we are teething with lust as he says and concerned always with the material and the physical then we're we're in a foreign Place frankly uh we're in a place where we are not from in a sense we need to go back to where we're from the realm of the intellect making sure we cultivate our ability to connect to that and commune with that and this is not a journey for the feet as he says right I mean you can't actually go to this place physically and which should be pretty obvious by now but rather you must close your eyes and call us instead upon another Vision which is to be waked within you what is this well he goes on to say practically then how you do this is that the soul itself must be trained to the habit of remarking first of all Noble Pursuits so I want to flee back to the Fatherland and not become so inundated with the material world and come to be in communion with the with the world of reality itself and the intellect which transcends US first of all do good things do noble things to come to appreciate the beauty of that then the works of beauty not produced by the labor of the Arts but by the virtue of men known for their goodness so it's interesting how he connects this to ethics if you really want to come to understand true beauty as best as you can right don't be looking at paintings all the time necessarily that may not help you rather go deeper try to understand Beauty in this higher order kind of way regarding Noble Pursuits and conduct or what what the goodness is that is created by people themselves who are good who are these sort of moral exemplars or virtuous exemplars to some extent and then once you have achieved this platinus says your soul will come first to the intellectual principle that is the principle Itself by which we measure Beauty and Survey all the beautiful ideas and the Supreme that isn't the one here right that which transcends US and will allow that that itself is beauty for by the efficacy of things like that come all Beauty else right by the efficacy of real Beauty and the Supreme Beauty everything else is beautiful because that's the standard of it and then by The Offspring and essence of the intellectual being and the good which lies Beyond is the fountain at once and the principle of beauty well very interesting stuff there and not the easiest stuff to grasp either a very abstract isn't it in a very different kind of way of thinking about things so there's a few thoughts and questions we could say about this right first of all for platinus beauty is a supreme intellectual principle it's a higher order being than those material things that participate in it so our beautiful things less beautiful than Beauty itself and I think we would have to answer that question yes at least for platinus he seems it seems to be that case it's definitely the case that physical people can be beautiful or that physical paintings themselves hating hanging on a wall can be beautiful but they're they the only reason they're beautiful is because they shared in some extent which our mind recognizes this they share in whatever it is that makes the reality of beauty itself exist and they're always going to do that to a certain degree because not every beautiful thing is equally beautiful we could argue everything's on a spectrum in some sense so that being the case Beauty itself is going to be that which is most beautiful and everything else less or so because it's participating in that form to to a greater or lesser extent secondly platitis suggests a moral distinction that maps onto this specific metaphysical one that ugliness and evil correlate to being concerned only with the material world so does that mean that intellectual substances are good and material ones are bad well there might be some of that going on with platinus and I think it's interesting to note that later on after these ideas come into circulation that some people will start believing that and no doubt there are significant groups of people that believe that even today and that will argue that the material is so bad like even the human body itself is just so corrupt and it's so bad that it needs to be deprived it needs to be sacrificed in some ways of certain kinds of things right develop your soul and develop your mind and uh and uh uh don't don't allow your body to be satisfied of all the appetites that it has right because it's bad I mean even those ideas have gone so far I mean so so far have been taken so far um such that even in times past there have been people that have believed that because the soul is good and the body is bad that it doesn't really um matter if you hurt people physically because the body doesn't matter anyway it's a correct thing anyway right you can't hurt somebody's soul sweet if you're hurting them physically you're not really hurting their true self in a sense um I'm not saying what Titus believes that but a distinction like this can lead somebody to draw those kinds of conclusions and thus to apply this in that kind of way which is interesting it's kind of creepy and sad and disturbing but it's interesting also isn't it thirdly platinus thinks then that to truly appreciate Beauty in a sense you have to become beautiful yourself you have to be trained in the noble the pure because morality and Beauty are all forms of the good isn't this Aristotle's point in a sense it is so why are we calling platinus a a Neo Aristotelian or I'm sorry a neoplatonist when it seems like he's a little bit of a Neo Aristotelian here well I mean we can make those distinctions I think that platinus himself is actually syncretizing the two a little bit on some things and there are thinkers that that think that Aristotle himself is really not that much of a departure from Plato and so uh we'll not have that discussion or argument here so yeah I mean I think I think his his basic metaphysic goes back to Plato but but there are things that they all agree about um but they all agree on and that really Drive how they think about the world um it's so that's that could only be expected right well finally and this is the course themed question what does this say about our Humanity but goodness we could say a lot about this for one thing what it says about our humanity is that at least in terms of how we come to appreciate Beauty and recognize beauty that that's not a human thing at all is it I mean that's a Divine thing that for platinus we recognize beautiful things as being beautiful because our mind has some sort of connection and communion with the Divine form of beauty itself and thus is able to make that correspondence between the object of Beauty and the definition of beauty the definition of beauty being the higher realm form of beauty itself that exists in the realm of the intellect so it says that about our Humanity but also what does it say about our Humanity in terms of ugliness and in a sense I think what an implication is regarding his discussion of ugliness is that um if our soul itself has become ugly that in a sense we've become less than human we have corrupted our Humanity that if we are completely inundated with the things of the physical world that we've we have abandoned in a sense our Humanity that's that's the point that he himself made right we have gone to some alien nature as he says in a nature that is alien to what our nature actually is supposed to be or what it is or how it's been made to be so in a sense we have we have turned our back on our Humanity by becoming ugly ugly and soul ugly in spirit um we've not embraced our Humanity so for platitis to to have a beautiful soul itself right to be one that appreciates Beauty such that our soul itself becomes beautiful itself really is to embrace Humanity it is to become as human as we possibly can be and for him that's crucial and for him he thinks indeed we have a moral responsibility to do that we should do that we should turn our back on being completely inundated with the physical world and focus on the Divine world of Beauty and the forms and the good because only there can we really become truly human to the greatest extent possible well I hope you've enjoyed this hope you keep thinking about platinus and uh we'll see you next time