In one of my classes, one of our readings came from The Essentials of Plotinus. I had never before heard of this ancient philosopher, Plotinus, but I was quickly drawn into his contemplative thoughts regarding beauty. He questions two aspects of the concept of beauty: (1) “Is everything beautiful with the one same beauty, or is there a beauty proper to the bodily and another to the bodiless? What, one or many, is beauty?”; and (2) “…bodily forms are not themselves beautiful but are beautiful because of something added to them: the same bodies are seen to be at times beautiful, at other times not, so that to be body is one thing and to be beautiful is something else again” (Plotinus 34). Here we see Plotinus searching the deepest sense of the meaning of beauty; to him beauty is not just a word or mere attribute—instead, it is an elaborately schemed body in an of itself, worthy of its own detailed attention. Many see beauty to be simply an attribute and do not think twice to label something as beautiful, judging only its immediate, instinctive thought.
Plotinus has clearly put his whole self into contemplating every aspect of beauty, whereas it is often written off as being present or absent and taken for granted. The thoughts mentioned above alone have helped shed light on my own thoughts about beauty being more than just a characteristic, but rather an intrinsic extraordinary connective element of the self or object instead of a separate, a priori feature. It makes you realize the appreciation deserved of true beauty when it is observed under close scrutiny. His thoughts and observations of prompted me to ask myself a question to see how I really see beauty, which I would like to share for anyone who is interested…
Based on the questions Plotinus raises, imagine a obvious example of where beauty can be thought to be seen: You are attracted to a specific person. One day you observe how you think he/she is beautiful, but the next she is not wearing making, or he is wearing ratty clothes, and you do not see the beauty you saw the day before. Was the beauty you originally saw beauty of the person in its every form, or only beauty because of outside factors added to it? If it is only beauty of the additions, are the additions themselves beautiful in and of its self, from the inside and out, or was it this perceived beauty confused and misconstrued as mere attraction to cosmetically supplemented effects, perhaps as love can be confused with lust or infatuation?
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