Aesthetics

On the Beautiful

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Plotinus

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On the Beautiful — the sixth treatise of the first Ennead — is among Plotinus's most celebrated and accessible works, and one of the founding documents of aesthetic philosophy. Beginning with the question of what makes things beautiful, Plotinus argues that beauty is not proportion or symmetry but the presence of Form — the shining through of Intellect into matter. The soul recognises beauty because it is itself beautiful, because it belongs to the intelligible realm that beauty reveals. The treatise culminates in an ascent: from the beauty of bodies to the beauty of souls, to the beauty of the virtues and the sciences, to Intellect itself, and finally to the supreme, sourceless beauty of the Good.