Thammasat University students who are interested in philosophy, aesthetics, art, psychology, design, fashion, and related subjects may find a newly available book useful.

Plotinus on Beauty: Beauty as Illuminated Unity in Multiplicity is an Open Access book, available for free download at this link:

https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/54662

Plotinus was a philosopher born and raised in Roman Egypt.

The TU Library collection includes several books by and about Plotinus as well as others about different aspects of the concept of beauty.

Plotinus on Beauty is by Professor Ota Gál, a researcher on the history of philosophy.

Professor Gál writes,

It is well known that Plotinus wrote two treatises on beauty. The first, On Beauty, is also the very first of the Enneads and belongs to the group of twenty one treatises written before Porphyry’s arrival in Rome. The second, On Intellectual Beauty, belongs rather to Plotinus’ middle period (it is the 31st chronologically) and was very probably part of a larger treatise…

Plotinus raises questions of the following kind: If someone who sees beauty excellently represented in a face is carried to that higher world, will anyone be so sluggish in his mind and so immovable that when he sees all the beauties in the world of sense, all its good proportion and the mighty excellence of its order, and the splendor of forms which is manifested in the stars, for all their remoteness, he will not thereupon think, seized with reverence, ‘What wonders, and from what source?’ Plotinus insists on two crucial points, namely that beauty can inspire an enquiry into its own source… and that this world is beautiful because it is an image of the intelligible cosmos, the Intellect.

The point, of course, is to demonstrate that the sensible world is dominated by a single principle, the Good, manifesting itself on different levels as beauty, and that it is not created by or imbued with evil forces…In this sense, Plotinus proceeds from Intellect down towards its image, since it is only beautiful precisely to the extent that it is an image of Intellect…

Plotinus himself makes clear where we should start: We ought to consider this first. What is this principle which is present in bodies [that makes them beautiful]? What is it that attracts the gaze of those who look at something and turns and draws them to it and makes them enjoy the sight? If we find this, perhaps we can use it as a stepping-stone and get a sight of the rest…

Beauty represents a perfect stepping-stone, enabling us to catch sight of everything. It is something we are familiar with from the sensible world, something which can move our soul and which, with the right guidance, can be used to draw us up to its source and perhaps even to the Source. Of course, Plotinus knew all of this already from having read Plato, which is perhaps the reason why treatise i.6 was the very first to be written.

Here are some other thoughts of Plotinus from books, some of which are available in the TU Library collection:

Beauty is established in multitude when the many is reduced into one, and in this case it communicates itself both to the parts and to the whole. But when a particular one, composed from similar parts, is received it gives itself to the whole, without departing from the sameness and integrity of its nature.

• The First Ennead (c. 250)

It is now time, leaving every object of sense far behind, to contemplate, by a certain ascent, a beauty of a much higher order; a beauty not visible to the corporeal eye, but alone manifest to the brighter eye of the soul, independent of all corporeal aid. However, since, without some previous perception of beauty it is impossible to express by words the beauties of sense, but we must remain in the state of the blind, so neither can we ever speak of the beauty of offices and sciences, and whatever is allied to these, if deprived of their intimate possession. Thus we shall never be able to tell of virtue’s brightness, unless by looking inward we perceive the fair countenance of justice and temperance, and are convinced that neither the evening nor morning star are half so beautiful and bright. But it is requisite to perceive objects of this kind by that eye by which the soul beholds such real beauties. Besides it is necessary that whoever perceives this species of beauty, should be seized with much greater delight, and more vehement admiration, than any corporeal beauty can excite; as now embracing beauty real and substantial. Such affections, I say, ought to be excited about true beauty, as admiration and sweet astonishment; desire also and love and a pleasant trepidation. For all souls, as I may say, are affected in this manner about invisible objects, but those the most who have the strongest propensity to their love; as it likewise happens about corporeal beauty; for all equally perceive beautiful corporeal forms, yet all are not equally excited, but lovers in the greatest degree.

• The First Ennead (c. 250)

Perhaps, the good and the beautiful are the same, and must be investigated by one and the same process; and in like manner the base and the evil. And in the first rank we must place the beautiful, and consider it as the same with the good; from which immediately emanates intellect as beautiful. Next to this, we must consider the soul receiving its beauty from intellect, and every inferior beauty deriving its origin from the forming power of the soul, whether conversant in fair actions and offices, or sciences and arts. Lastly, bodies themselves participate of beauty from the soul, which, as something divine, and a portion of the beautiful itself, renders whatever it supervenes and subdues, beautiful as far as its natural capacity will admit.

• The First Ennead (c. 250)

The sensitive eye can never be able to survey, the orb of the sun, unless strongly endued with solar fire, and participating largely of the vivid ray. Everyone therefore must become divine, and of godlike beauty, before he can gaze upon a god and the beautiful itself. Thus proceeding in the right way of beauty he will first ascend into the region of intellect, contemplating every fair species, the beauty of which he will perceive to be no other than ideas themselves; for all things are beautiful by the supervening irradiations of these, because they are the offspring and essence of intellect. But that which is superior to these is no other than the fountain of good, everywhere widely diffusing around the streams of beauty, and hence in discourse called the beautiful itself because beauty is its immediate offspring.

• The First Ennead (c. 250)

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)