Beauty

The central place of beauty in Plato's thought is witnessed in the Dialogues Phaedrus and Symposium. The perception of beauty induces anamnesis, a recollection of previous acquaintance with the universal, the real, or, in a word, the forms. Beauty is capable of higher and higher manifestations, and once apprehended it induces eros, or the passion that drives the soul towards a spiritual ascent, a journey of knowledge combined with love culminating eventually in a purely intellectual apprehension of beauty, goodness, justice, and wisdom.