This document discusses two philosophical conceptions of beauty: the classical conception and the idealist conception. The classical conception sees beauty as consisting of an arrangement of integral parts into a coherent whole according to proportion, harmony, and symmetry. The idealist conception views beauty as perfect unity or as the principle of unity itself, as exemplified by Plotinus describing fire as the most beautiful physical thing for its subtlety and upward movement resembling the unembodied.

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W h a t i s B e a u t y ?
B y S A B A

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Philosophical
Conceptions of Beauty
• T h e C l a s s i c a l
C o n c e p t i o n
• T h e I d e a l i s t
C o n c e p t i o n

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B e a u t y I s l o c a t e d
i n t h e e y e o f t h e
b e h o l d e r .

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The Classical
Conception
The classical conception is that beauty
consists of an arrangement of integral parts
into a coherent whole, according to
proportion, harmony, symmetry, and similar
notions.
Western conception of beauty embodied in
classical and neo-classical architecture.
Aristotle says in the Poetics that “to be
beautiful, a living creature, and every whole
made up of parts, must … present a certain
order in its arrangement of parts” (Aristotle,
volume 2, 2322 [1450b34]).

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The Idealist Conception
• Beauty here is conceived—perhaps explicitly in
contrast to the classical aesthetics of integral parts and
coherent whole—as perfect unity, or indeed as the
principle of unity itself.
• Plotinus declares that fire is the most beautiful physical
thing, “making ever upwards, the subtlest and
sprightliest of all bodies, as very near to the
unembodied. … Hence the splendor of its light, the
splendor that belongs to the Idea” (Plotinus, 22
[Ennead 1.3]).

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T H A N K YO U
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