Platonism and the Natural World: How Far do Plato or Later Platonists Appreciate the Beauties of Nature?
Platonism and the Natural World: How Far do Plato or Later Platonists Appreciate the Beauties of Nature?

Summary/Abstract: Does the philosopher Plato, despite his elevation to a supreme position in the intelligible world of the Beautiful itself, or the Idea of Beauty, really exhibit any appreciation of the beauties of nature, or Natural Beauty? The omission of any mention of the beauties of Nature in Diotima’s ladder of ascent to the Beautiful Itself in the Symposium leads me to propose that Plato, in line with the sensibility of Greeks of the Classical period in general, does not possess what would later be termed an ‘Arcadian’ view of the beauties of the natural world; and even in the later Platonist tradition there is little evidence of such sensibility.

• Details
• Contents