Beauty

Use in the book

Back from the siege of Potidaea, the rebel city in the north Aegean, Socrates asks how philosophy is doing and whether any of the young men "had turned out to be outstanding in wisdom, or in beauty, or in both" (153d). Critias, Charmides' cousin and guardian, answers that the young men coming in are the lovers "of the one who is thought the most beautiful — at the moment, anyway" (154a). Socrates, telling the story to an unnamed friend, confesses that he is "no measure of anything": "nearly everyone of that age looks beautiful to me." All the same, Charmides, son of Glaucon, struck him as "a marvel of stature and beauty" (154b–c; see Age and maturity). Chaerephon, Socrates' friend, asks, "Hasn't he a lovely face?", and says that stripped the boy would seem to have no face at all, "his figure is so perfectly beautiful" (154d).

Socrates turns the praise. "What an invincible man you are describing," he says, "if he has just one little thing more"; and when Critias asks what, he answers, "If where his soul is concerned … he is in fact well made." Critias replies with the gentleman's phrase, "Oh, he's thoroughly beautiful and good … in that respect too", and Socrates asks, "Then why don't we strip that very part of him … and take a look at it before we look at his figure?" (154d–e). Chaerephon's verb for undressing is turned on the soul, and visible beauty becomes the reason for looking at what cannot be seen.

Beauty then acts on Socrates himself: seeing inside the boy's cloak, he is "on fire", and thinks the lyric poet Cydias wise in his warning about "a beautiful boy" (155d–e; see Advice and greeting). The cure he offers moves beauty from the body to speech. A doctor of Zalmoxis, god-king of the Thracians to the north of the Aegean, taught him that the soul "is treated with certain charms, and these charms are beautiful words. From words like these, temperance comes to be in souls" (157a). Καλοί is the word used of the boy, and the charm can be read as the conversation that follows (see Charm). No one, the doctor said, was to be "so rich, or so wellborn, or so beautiful" as to persuade Socrates to treat a patient's head before his soul (157b–c2). After praising the beauty and virtue of the boy's two houses and his looks (157e–158b2; see Anacreon), Socrates adds: "And if, as Critias here says, you are also well enough endowed for temperance and the rest, then blessed is the child, my dear Charmides … your mother bore" (158b). The boy blushes, and to Socrates the narrator "he looked even more beautiful" (158c; see Age and maturity).

Then the word changes sense. To Charmides' first answer, that temperance is "a kind of quietness" (159b; see Quietness), Socrates replies, "Tell me: temperance is one of the fine things, isn't it?" "Certainly," says the boy (159c). Socrates runs through a schoolboy's lessons and then the other actions of body and soul, asking for instance whether "the ones done nimbly and quickly" are not "the fine ones, and the ones done laboriously and quietly the ugly ones" (159c–160b2; see Quickness and slowness). On this argument, then, temperance would not be a kind of quietness; and even if as many quiet actions as quick ones proved finer, temperance would be no more acting quietly than acting quickly: "For in our argument we laid it down that temperance is one of the fine things, and quick things have turned out to be no less fine than quiet ones" (160b–d2). The premise is never examined. Against the second definition, modesty, Socrates uses it again with a companion: temperance is "not only fine, but good as well" (160e; see Modesty and shame).

Critias joins the fine to benefit: Hesiod, the poet of the Works and Days, he says, called "things made finely and beneficially" works (163c; see Action). Socrates keeps the pair: asked what medicine does for us, he would answer, "No small benefit: it produces health, a fine work for us"; so he asks what "fine work" temperance produces (165c–e; see Art and craft). Twice in the argument about knowledge of knowledge the word keeps its first sense. Among his parallels to a knowledge of itself Socrates asks about "a love of such a kind that it turns out to be love of nothing beautiful, but of itself and of the other loves", and Critias denies that there is such a love (167e). After a prologue in which the whole company seemed in love with Charmides, the example can be read as a joke on them. Critias' own analogy then sets beauty beside speed: "when someone has speed he is fast, and when he has beauty, beautiful" (169e).

As first imagined, temperance would have had households and cities "run well", and men "do finely and well in every action" (171e–172a; see Happiness and doing well); but the knowledge by which each thing is done "well and beneficially" proves to be the knowledge of good and bad, and that, it seems, is not temperance (174b–d; see Art and craft). Socrates turns the conclusion on himself: "For surely what is agreed to be the finest of all things would not have turned out to be of no use to us, if I were of any use at inquiring well" (175a–b). The argument had laid down only that temperance is "one of the fine things" (159c, 160d); now it is the finest, and when it seems useless Socrates blames his inquiry, assuming that what is finest cannot in truth be useless, an assumption that can be read as resting on the pairing of fine and beneficial that Critias took from Hesiod (163c). Socrates grieves for the boy, such as he is in his looks and most temperate in soul, if temperance brings him no profit (175d–e): looks and soul stand together again, as at 154d–e. The dialogue never asks what the fine is, but it rests on the fine twice: as the premise that refutes the first definition, and, at the end, as the ground on which Socrates will not accept that the finest of all things is of no use.

Places to read

1. 153dSocrates asks whether any of the young men has turned out outstanding in wisdom, or in beauty, or in both.
2. 154a–cThe lovers come in ahead of the boy thought most beautiful; Socrates, to whom nearly everyone of that age looks beautiful, finds Charmides a marvel of stature and beauty.
3. 154d–eChaerephon praises the boy's face and figure; Socrates names one thing more, a well-made soul; Critias calls him beautiful and good in that respect too, and Socrates proposes to strip his soul first.
4. 155d–eSocrates, on fire at the sight inside the boy's cloak, thinks Cydias wisest in love, who spoke of a beautiful boy as a lion.
5. 157a–c2The Thracian's teaching: the soul is treated with charms, which are beautiful words, and no one rich, wellborn or beautiful is to persuade the healer to treat the head before the soul.
6. 157e–158c2Socrates praises the beauty and virtue of the boy's two houses and his looks, makes his blessedness depend on temperance, and finds him more beautiful still when he blushes.
7. 159c–160d23Temperance is one of the fine things; quick actions prove no less fine than quiet ones, in body and soul; so temperance is not quietness.
8. 160eTemperance is not only fine, but good as well.
9. 163b–cCritias' Hesiod: a thing made may be a disgrace when it does not come about with what is fine; things made finely and beneficially are works.
10. 165c–eMedicine produces health, a fine work; what fine work does temperance produce?
11. 167eCritias denies that there is a love which loves nothing beautiful, but only itself and the other loves.
12. 169eCritias' analogy: as whoever has beauty is beautiful, so whoever has a knowledge that knows itself will know himself.
13. 171e–172aUnder temperance households would be run well, and men would do finely and well in every action.
14. 175a–bWhat is agreed to be the finest of all things has turned out to be of no use; Socrates blames his inquiring.
15. 175d–eSocrates is aggrieved for the boy, such as he is in his looks and temperate in soul, if temperance should bring him no profit.

Translation in this edition

The edition renders καλός by what it is said of. It is "beautiful" of persons (154a–b, 154d, 155d, 157b, 158c), of the object of love (167e), of the charm's words (157a) and in Critias' analogy (169e), and "fine" of acts, works and things: the gift for poetry, "That fine gift" (155a), the premise and the comparisons of 159c–160e23, Hesiod's "what is fine" (163c), the "fine work" of medicine and the one asked of temperance (165d–e), and "the finest of all things" (175a). Of persons the comparative is "more beautiful" of the blushing boy (158c), "finer" of offspring (157e) and "handsomer" of Pyrilampes (158a); πάγκαλος is "so perfectly beautiful" (154d). The stock phrase keeps its literal words, "beautiful and good" (154e), so that Critias' compliment still speaks of beauty. Κάλλος is "beauty" at all four of its places. The adverb καλῶς is "finely" (163c, 172a), "well" (156c, 171e, 175b), "in good condition" in the phrase καλῶς ἔχειν, literally "to be in a fine state" (156e, 157a), "right" in assent and judgement (155a, 156d, 161a, 172d, 172e, 173a), and "Good for you" in καλῶς ποιῶν (156a, 162e); its comparative κάλλιον is "better" (172b). Αἰσχρός is "ugly" of laboured movements (159d) and "improper" once (155a); "disgrace" in Critias' Hesiod renders another word, ὄνειδος (oneidos), "reproach" (163b–c). Chaerephon's "lovely face" renders εὐπρόσωπος (euprosōpos), "fair-faced" (154d), and "looks" renders ἰδέα (idea), "appearance" (157d, 158b, 175d).

ἄμαχος

Attested: ἄμαχον (amachon; 154d). Not to be fought, invincible. Hearing the praise of the boy's face and figure, Socrates exclaims, "Heracles! What an invincible man you are describing, if he has just one little thing more", the one thing being a well-made soul (154d–e). Lemma: ἄμαχος.

ἐκπλήσσω

Attested: ἐκπεπληγμένοι (ekpeplēgmenoi; 154c). To strike out of one's wits, to astound. All the rest seemed to Socrates to be in love with Charmides, "so astounded and flustered were they when he came in" (154c). Diotima uses the same verb of Socrates himself before beautiful boys (Symposium 211d). Lemma: ἐκπλήσσω.

θαυμαστός

Attested: θαυμαστός (thaumastos; 154c), θαυμαστόν (thaumaston; 154c, 162e). Wonderful, to be wondered at. Charmides struck Socrates "as a marvel of stature and beauty", and of the crowd's passion Socrates the narrator remarks, "With us grown men that was less surprising" (154c); at 162d–e he tells Critias that it is "no wonder that he doesn't know, at his age". The verb θαυμάζω, "be surprised" at 161c and "wonder at" at 164a, is not listed. Lemma: θαυμαστός.

κάλλος

Attested: κάλλει (kallei; 153d, 157e), κάλλος (kallos; 154c, 169e). Beauty. Socrates asks whether any young man is outstanding "in wisdom, or in beauty, or in both" (153d); Charmides is "a marvel of stature and beauty" (154c); his father's house is celebrated "for its outstanding beauty and virtue" (157e–158a2); and in Critias' analogy whoever has beauty is beautiful (169e). Lemma: κάλλος.

καλός

Attested: καλῶν (kalōn; 154a, 159c, 160d), καλλίστου (kallistou; 154a), καλούς (kalous; 154b, 157a), καλοί (kaloi; 154b), καλός (kalos; 154e, 169e), καλόν (kalon; 155a, 157b, 159d twice, 160b, 160e twice, 165d, 165e), καλοῦ (kalou; 155d, 159d, 163c, 167e), καλλίω (kalliō; 157e, 160b), καλλίων (kalliōn; 158a, 158c), κάλλιστον (kalliston; 159c, 159d, 175a), κάλλιον (kallion; 159c, 159e three times), κάλλιστα (kallista; 160a), καλλίους (kallious; 160c twice), καλά (kala; 160d); the compound πάγκαλος (pankalos; 154d); the adverb καλῶς (kalōs; 155a, 156a, 156c, 156d, 156e, 157a, 161a, 162e, 163c, 171e, 172a, 172d, 172e, 173a, 175b) and its comparative κάλλιον (kallion; 172b). Beautiful, fine: in the prologue the beauty of persons and of the charm's "beautiful words" (157a), in the argument the fine, from the premise that temperance is "one of the fine things" (159c) to "the finest of all things" (175a). The adverb is "finely" or "well", and in assent "right". Lemma: καλός.

καλὸς καὶ ἀγαθός

Attested: καλὸς καὶ ἀγαθός (kalos kai agathos; 154e). Beautiful and good: the stock phrase for a gentleman, usually contracted to καλὸς κἀγαθός, here in its full form. When Socrates asks for a well-made soul as well, Critias answers, "Oh, he's thoroughly beautiful and good … in that respect too" (154e), and so claims for the soul the word everyone has been using of the boy's looks. Lemma: καλὸς καὶ ἀγαθός.

σύμφημι

Attested: συνέφασαν (synephasan; 154d). To say the same, to agree. After Chaerephon's praise of the boy's figure, "The others all said the same as Chaerephon" (154d). Lemma: σύμφημι.

ὑπερφυῶς

Attested: ὑπερφυῶς (hyperphyōs; 154d). Beyond nature, extraordinarily. It is Socrates' one-word answer to Chaerephon's "Hasn't he a lovely face?": "Extraordinarily" (154d). Lemma: ὑπερφυῶς.

θαυμαστὸς (thaumastos)

Attested: θαυμαστός (thaumastos; 154c), θαυμαστόν (thaumaston; 154c, 162e). Wonderful, to be wondered at. Charmides struck Socrates "as a marvel of stature and beauty", and of the crowd's passion Socrates the narrator remarks, "With us grown men that was less surprising" (154c); at 162d–e he tells Critias that it is "no wonder that he doesn't know, at his age". The verb θαυμάζω, "be surprised" at 161c and "wonder at" at 164a, is not listed. Lemma: θαυμαστός.

τεθορυβημένοι (tethorybēmenoi)

Attested: τεθορυβημένοι (tethorybēmenoi; 154c). To make a din, and in the passive to be thrown into confusion; θόρυβος is the uproar of a crowd. The admirers were "so astounded and flustered … when he came in" (154c). Lemma: θορυβέω.

ὑποβεβηκέναι (hypobebēkenai)

Attested: ὑποβεβηκέναι (hypobebēkenai; 158b). To step down, to fall below. Socrates tells Charmides, "As for what can be seen of your looks, dear son of Glaucon, you seem to me to fall short of none of your forebears in any respect" (158a–b). Lemma: ὑποβαίνω.

Elsewhere in Plato

In the Symposium Socrates reports what he learned about love from Diotima, a wise woman of Mantinea in Arcadia, and her teaching can be read as the road the Charmides points to without taking. The lover begins with one beautiful body and there begets "beautiful words" (210a), the words of the Thracian's charm. He comes to count the beauty in souls more precious than that in bodies, so that a decent soul with only a slight bloom is enough for him to love and care for, and to bring forth words that make the young better (210b–c); then he passes to practices and laws, to the kinds of knowledge, and at last to the one study whose object is the beautiful itself, which is not beautiful in one respect and ugly in another, and will not appear to him as a face or hands (210c–211c), though the praise of Charmides began with his "lovely face" (154d). Should Socrates ever see it, Diotima tells him, it will not seem to him to be like gold or clothing or the beautiful boys and young men whose sight now astounds him (211d), in the verb used of Charmides' admirers (154c). Critias' knowledge of itself, likened at 167e to a love of nothing beautiful, can be read as the reverse of Diotima's study, which is of nothing but the beautiful.

Two dialogues ask what makes fine things fine, and both tie the fine to benefit, as Critias does at 163c. In the Gorgias Polus, a follower of the rhetorician Gorgias, agrees with Socrates that bodies, colours, shapes, sounds, laws, practices and studies are called fine for their use, for the pleasure they give, or for both, and approves the definition of the fine "by pleasure and good" (474d–475a). In the Hippias Major, whose authorship has been doubted, Socrates and the sophist Hippias of Elis, in the western Peloponnese, try the useful, as eyes are fine that can see and a body fine for running or wrestling (295c), and then the beneficial, the useful for good (296c–e). But the beneficial is the cause of good, and a cause is other than what it causes, as a father is not his son; so the fine would not be good, nor the good fine, and neither man will accept it (296e–297d). The dialogue ends on the proverb "fine things are difficult" (304e). The Charmides holds the two together without defining either: temperance is "not only fine, but good as well" (160e), and Socrates will not let the finest of all things turn out to be of no use (175a–b).

The Platonists

Plotinus, the Platonist philosopher who taught at Rome in the third century AD, wrote a treatise "On Beauty" that climbs by the steps of Diotima's ascent. Beauty is chiefly in what is seen, and also in what is heard; above the senses there are beautiful practices, actions, states and kinds of knowledge, and the beauty of the virtues (I.6.1). He asks those who love what lies beyond the senses what they feel before the beauty of souls. What they love there, he answers, is no shape, colour or size but the soul, itself colourless and with a colourless temperance, when they see in themselves or in another "greatness of soul, a just character, pure temperance, courage with its fierce face, and gravity and modesty flowering on a steady, calm and untroubled disposition" (I.6.5). This can be read as the look at a soul stripped that Socrates proposed at 154e, finding beautiful the very temperance and modesty that Charmides tried to define. For Plotinus the purified soul becomes beautiful, the good and the beautiful are at the summit the same (I.6.6), and an eye that had not become like the sun would never have seen the sun, nor would a soul see the beautiful unless it had become beautiful (I.6.9).²

Use in the book

Socrates grants Alcibiades’ outstanding looks at 104a. The concession matters because the later correction is not that every source of his confidence is imaginary. It is that visible advantages do not establish the understanding required to advise. The expert at 107b is to be heard whether beautiful or ugly, wellborn or lowborn. At 113b “Alcibiades the beautiful” is placed beside the acknowledgement that he does not know justice, producing a sharp mismatch between social description and competence. At 119c Socrates calls his reluctance to train unworthy of his appearance: the compliment presses him toward a more demanding standard.

The royal speech again relativizes beauty by describing painstaking attention to a prince’s bodily formation and imagining Amestris unimpressed by Athenian claims. The decisive change occurs at 131c–132a2. The body stops blooming and its lovers depart, but Alcibiades himself is said to begin blooming. Socrates accordingly urges him to become as beautiful as possible. The retained word allows ethical improvement and attractiveness to resonate rather than treating “beautiful” and “fine” as wholly unrelated Greek categories. That resonance does not erase the argument’s distinction between the person and bodily possessions.

The ending protects the beautiful man from having his present slavish condition named outright. Praise there remains teasing pressure, not a verdict that physical charm already confers freedom or virtue. The people’s handsome face is the corresponding danger: visible appeal can still draw the learner away.

Places to read

1. 104aOutstanding beauty and height are conceded.
2. 107bA knowledgeable adviser need not be beautiful.
3. 113bThe beautiful name-holder is said not to know justice.
4. 119cAppearance becomes the standard a complacent proposal fails to match.
5. 121dRoyal attendants shape the heir for beauty.
6. 123eBeauty is among the inadequate resources imagined before Amestris.
7. 131c–132a2Bodily fading and personal flowering separate kinds of attraction.
8. 135cSocrates avoids naming an unbefitting state in a beautiful man.

Translation in this edition

The edition divides a single Greek family between beautiful of persons and fine of conduct, while preserving beautiful at 131d. This entry concerns the dramatic and erotic use; the formal argument linking the fine and good requires its own analysis.

ἀνθέω

Attested: ἀνθοῦν (anthoun; 131c); ἀνθεῖν (anthein; 131e). To bloom. To bloom or flower, first of bodily youth and then of the person’s developing promise. Lexical identification: lemma: ἀνθέω. See Beauty and bloom.

ἰδέα

Attested: ἰδέας (ideas; 119c). Appearance or visible form; Socrates calls Alcibiades' complacency unworthy of his looks and other advantages, not unworthy of a metaphysical Form. Lexical identification: lemma: ἰδέα. See Beauty and bloom.

κάλλος

Attested: κάλλει (kallei; 123e). Beauty, one of the resources the imagined Persian queen would find inadequate. Lexical identification: lemma: κάλλος. See Beauty and bloom.

καλός

Attested: κάλλιστός (kallistos; 104a). Beautiful; the superlative grants Alcibiades exceptional bodily attractiveness. Lexical identification: lemma: καλός. See Beauty and bloom.

μέγεθος

Attested: μεγέθει (megethei; 123e). Stature or bodily size, an advantage listed with beauty but insufficient for expert authority. Lexical identification: lemma: μέγεθος. See Beauty and bloom.

ὥρα

Attested: ὥρας (hōras; 131e). The season or bloom of youthful beauty; what belongs to Alcibiades loses its attractive season just as Alcibiades himself begins to bloom. Lexical identification: lemma: ὥρα. See Beauty and bloom.

Use in the book

Fine conduct becomes a bridge in the examination of justice and advantage. At 109c Alcibiades says that war against those doing just things does not seem fine. The remark follows his recognition that a speaker would not admit recommending such a war. Fine conduct here is connected to public avowability and honorable presentation, but the later argument asks whether this accepted appraisal can withstand closer ethical analysis.

At 115a Alcibiades agrees that all just actions are fine. He refuses the claim that all fine actions are good, however, and also allows shameful actions to be good. His example is recognizable without any abstract ethical theory: those who rescue friends in battle may be wounded or killed, whereas men who fail to rescue them can return safe. The counterexample turns on a distinction between the honorable appearance or character of an undertaking and the fortunes of its agent.

Socrates does not simply answer that death is good. He distinguishes respects of evaluation. The rescue is fine in respect of the courageous attempt to save those whom one ought to save, and bad in respect of wounds and death. Courage and death are different. Since Alcibiades would not accept life without courage, courage is identified as one of the greatest goods. The fineness of rescue therefore attaches to an acknowledged good. At 116a the resulting statement remains explicit about scope: nothing fine is bad insofar as it is fine, and nothing shameful good insofar as shameful. This leaves a composite action open to different evaluations for different features.

The next argument, at 116b–c, goes beyond the rescue analysis. Someone acting finely does well; doing well leads into happiness and the acquisition of goods. The speakers then identify fine and good again and state that whatever they find fine they will find good, on the basis of this argument. The reader should not erase the shift from aspect-qualified predication to a more general claim. Nor should the passage be recast as a full theory of Beauty or a declaration that visible attractiveness invariably benefits its possessor. Its immediate objects are actions and the standards Alcibiades employs in political speech.

The conventional social description “fine and good” is itself subjected to examination at 124e–125b2. Alcibiades initially identifies the desired excellence with what the fine and good Athenians do. Socrates asks whether these are intelligent men and in what they are intelligent. Shoemaking supplies the limiting case: a person can be good at shoes but bad at cloaks. The prestigious phrase cannot tell them which political competence they seek. Its ordinary familiarity is precisely why it must be unpacked.

The moral and bodily senses continue to interact after the main argument. Socrates urges Alcibiades to become as beautiful as possible while speaking about the improvement of the soul at 131d; political corruption will make him uglier at 132a. At the end, Socrates avoids bluntly naming the youth's slavish condition “where a beautiful man is concerned” (135c). The language lets physical distinction and ethical deficiency confront one another. The dialogue never treats a handsome appearance as sufficient evidence of fine character; the same young man's beauty makes that insufficiency dramatically vivid.

Places to read

1. 109cAlcibiades calls unjust war unfine in the context of what an adviser would acknowledge
2. 115a–116a23Just actions are fine; rescue in battle leads to the crucial “insofar as” qualification
3. 116b–116d2Fine conduct is linked with doing well, goodness, and advantage
4. 124e–125b2The social description “fine and good” fails to identify a specific political excellence
5. 131d–132a2Beauty language shifts to improvement or corruption of the person
6. 135b–135cThe finer is called more befitting, while the beautiful Alcibiades is confronted with a slavish condition

Translation in this edition

The edition generally uses “beautiful” of appearance and “fine” of conduct, while preserving “fine and good” for καλοὶ κἀγαθοί. That is readable English but divides a Greek word the argument and drama keep connected. “Well said” translates καλῶς in conversational appraisal; it should not automatically be promoted into a technical assertion about moral fineness.

καλὸς κἀγαθός

Attested: καλοὶ κἀγαθοί (kaloi kagathoi; 124e). At 124e: The respectable Athenian men whose affairs Alcibiades initially proposes as the model of the desired competence. Lexical identification: phrase label: καλὸς κἀγαθός. See Fine conduct.

καλός / καλῶς

Attested: καλά (kala; 115a); καλόν (kalon; 115c); καλῶς (kalōs; 116b). At 115a: Fine actions, a description Alcibiades grants to all just actions. At 115c: Fine in a specified respect, particularly the courage in rescue. At 116b: Finely, qualifying action in the argument connecting it with doing well. Lexical identification: family label: καλός / καλῶς. See Fine conduct.

Use in the book

The Spartans ask for “the fine things on top of the good” at 148c. The wording keeps two commendations in relation rather than treating them as a single undifferentiated request. In the local argument, the prayer’s restraint matters: it does not try to prescribe particular triumphs or possessions independently of their goodness. The phrase need not be expanded into a comprehensive doctrine equating moral beauty and benefit.

The Athenians’ claim to offer the “finest” sacrifices at 148e is immediately tested by Ammon’s preference for Spartan auspicious speech. Costliness and magnificence are insufficient evidence of acceptable worship. An even more pointed use comes at 150c, where “greatness of soul” is called the “finest” name within unintelligence. The superlative commends the flattering label ironically, not the underlying deficiency.

The adverb performs more straightforward assessments: the safe poet speaks well at 143a, and Alcibiades says Socrates has advised him well at 151a. These evaluations apply to particular speech and advice. They support the theme that a worthwhile utterance is judged by what it helps its hearer do, but they do not make every kalōs a technical reference to the knowledge of the best.

Places to read

1. 143aThe poet’s prayer is judged well and safely spoken.
2. 148cThe Spartan prayer distinguishes the fine from the good while joining them.
3. 148eAthenian ritual excellence appears within their challenged self-description.
4. 150c“Finest” ironically praises a flattering name for unintelligence.
5. 151aAlcibiades judges Socrates’ advice well given.

Translation in this edition

The translation keeps “fine” distinct from “good” and renders kalōs as “well” where English requires an adverb. At 151a it accordingly says “advised me well”, not “given me good advice”. The compound kallinikos at the ending belongs to the language of fair victory, rather than being another simple occurrence of kalos.

Use in the book

The dialogue moves between attractive persons and admirable practices from its first page. Socrates asks whether the boys’ earnestness concerns something great and fine. The athlete’s sneer prompts a question about shame. The cultured rival defends philosophy so emphatically that he makes disdain for it incompatible with considering oneself a man. Meanwhile, the appearance of the listening youths affects both Socrates and his respondent. The same evaluative vocabulary inhabits an erotic scene and a philosophical inquiry.

Socrates then imposes an order on evaluation: can someone know whether a thing is fine or shameful without knowing what it is? The cultured lover agrees that he cannot. The initial question is not abandoned; it becomes dependent on an account of philosophy. His successive definitions must explain a practice worthy of the praise he confidently gave.

At 133d “good as well” supplies a further requirement, enabling an inquiry into benefits rather than admiration alone. Toward the close, shame returns as a test of responsibility: it would be shameful for the philosopher to lack a contribution to great matters of judgment, or to be second or third when friends or city call on him. The standard is no longer merely how cultivated one looks before a beloved.

The argument does not provide a general theory identifying all beauty, goodness, and usefulness. Nor does the social reality of embarrassment guarantee truth. The philosopher’s supposed shame in being outranked must still be read with the reasons about judgment and knowledge, rather than treated as an independent proof.

Places to read

1. 132dεἰ δοκεῖ σοι τὸ φιλοσοφεῖν καλὸν εἶναι ἢ οὔ — The explicit question asks whether philosophizing is fine.
2. 133aὑπὸ τῶν νέων τε καὶ καλῶν — The same adjective describes beautiful youths.
3. 133bεἴτε καλὸν εἴτε αἰσχρόν — Evaluation is made dependent on knowing what the thing is.
4. 133dκαλὸν εἶναι μόνον τὴν φιλοσοφίαν ἢ καὶ ἀγαθόν — Being fine and being good are expressly distinguished.

Translation in this edition

The edition’s Key Words keeps “beautiful” for the young and “fine” for pursuits, while retaining a single Greek heading. It also preserves “shameful” at the final questions. At 138d, the second half of Socrates’ question proposes “not shameful,” which the reply rejects. Reading it instead as an English question that presses toward “is it not shameful?” would blur the contrast Socrates is testing.

Use in the book

Lysis’ appearance and Hippothales’ praise give the word an immediate personal setting. The καλοί at 206a are the beautiful ones whom praise makes proud and harder to win. At 207a Lysis is conspicuously beautiful, “beautiful and good” in the familiar evaluative phrase.

At 216c, a proverb supplies τὸ καλὸν φίλον, “the beautiful [is] a friend/dear”. Socrates pictures the object as smooth and slippery, eluding capture, and then says that the good is beautiful. This is a provisional turn in the search for the friend. It does not establish that beauty and goodness are synonymous in all the dialogue’s uses.

Places to read

1. 216cτὸ καλὸν φίλον — the beautiful [is] dear or a friend.
2. 204b
3. 206a
4. 207a
5. 216c–d

Use in the book

The Phaedrus excerpt makes visible beauty awaken a recollection of true beauty and describes the lover’s upward impulse through growing wings. In the Timaeus, the best maker must produce what is most beautiful; beauty belongs to the explanation of cosmic ordering. The Symposium passage argues that Love desires good and beautiful things because he lacks them, making beauty an object of desire rather than a possession already secured.

Places to read

1. I.9.10Visible beauty points beyond itself through recollection.
2. I.21.1.2Beauty expresses the fitting work of the best maker.
3. I.9.17.1Love’s relation to beauty is one of desire and lack.

Translation in this edition

“Beautiful” follows the prominent senses here; “fine” or “noble” may be preferable where the force is evaluative without a visual emphasis.

Use in the book

The bodies/feelings comparison separates beauty from grace, then changes their locations according to the object: bodily beauty lies in forms and solids in relation, beauty of feeling in elevation and spirituality. The poetry passage reserves beauty to the idea, while the type/imprint/image sequence orders several kinds of representation and their places. These formulations should not be condensed into a single metaphysical definition. Even a broad preference is tested against an exception: beginnings are usually more beautiful than developments, yet the rose is not less beautiful than the bud. The notebook’s own counterexample prevents “usually” from becoming an absolute law.

Places to read

1. II, p. 519, entry 7, ¶1Bodily beauty differs from grace in movement or clothing.
2. II, p. 519, entry 7, ¶2Feeling relocates beauty to elevation and spirituality.
3. II, p. 484–485, entry 13, ¶4Beauty is reserved to idea within an account of imaginative arts.
4. II, p. 834, entry 7, ¶2Type, imprint, image and divine idea receive comparative ranks.
5. I, p. 160, entry 2, ¶1The rose qualifies a preference for beginnings.

Translation in this edition

The English translation retains the substantival beautiful where le beau names a category. It does not identify the unspecified places in the type/imprint comparison or remove the question of why beginnings may be more beautiful.

Use in the book

The opening promise is to unfold an interior beauty already present in the reader's inheritance. Traherne does not set that beauty against the delight of the senses; he asks the reader to discover more than the surface. A grain of sand can manifest wisdom and power, and an object's service can be more valuable than the visible beauty that first attracts attention. The world is beautiful as a work and as a gift addressed to an enjoyer.

II.20 gives beauty a precise place in an argument about divine visibility. A beautiful body involves a pleasing variety of figures and colours, but no finite visible body can adequately display infinity or eternity. Even the most beautiful object becomes unnoticed through constant familiarity. The difficulty may therefore lie less in God's failure to reveal Himself than in the viewer's habituated disregard. The world itself is proposed as the body through which divine beauty becomes manifest as far as visibility allows.

Beauty also becomes the soul's own form. Understanding receives amiable ideas; love makes that knowing person delightful to others. Thus the observer is not left outside the scene as a neutral spectator. Learning the beauty of things alters the beauty of the one who knows them. A mature response joins perception, valuation, action, and reciprocal delight.

Places to read

1. I.3The inheritance of the world possesses an interior beauty that needs to be unfolded.
2. I.27Spiritual service and manifested goodness exceed merely visible surface beauty.
3. II.20The argument about a visible divine body tests variety, manifestation, and habituation.
4. II.84Objects and knowledge beautify the soul in likeness to eternal wisdom.
5. I.89The disfigured body of Christ becomes the occasion of love and adoration.

In this edition

“Beauty” does not always mean prettiness, and “amiable” means worthy of love. Conversely, the vocabulary of inward beauty does not authorize erasing the text's exact delight in colour, light, and bodily form.

The difficult beauty of the Cross

The Cross prevents this vocabulary from becoming a simple preference for pleasant surfaces. Traherne describes a body exhausted, wounded, and disfigured, then asks how such a spectacle can delight. The answer turns on the love expressed through suffering. He does not redescribe the wounds as visually agreeable. Rather, a more comprehensive apprehension reads the personal action within the terrible appearance. The same distinction that allows a common object to disclose unsuspected wealth also requires the beholder to remain with what is painful. Beauty as manifested goodness can demand compassionate attention instead of aesthetic distance.

Use in the book

The early inward-eye passage treats beauty as eternal and participating in God, inaccessible to the gaze that stops at exterior form. A few days later, reading Bernardin de Saint-Pierre illuminates a receptive sense that gathers physical beauties; the soul spiritualizes them and combines them with ideal beauties. The passage carefully preserves stages of activity. The senses receive, the soul transforms and relates, and love and adoration expand.

Beauty can accordingly support hope. The generous display of natural riches offered to good and wicked alike becomes, in the conversation with Cazalès, a reason to trust divine goodness. Elsewhere the beauty of a beloved soul appears through a remembered face or the quiet influence of a life. It need not be spectacular, nor depend on self-display.

The June 1835 entry makes a crucial correction to aesthetic ambition. Mediocre literary production causes the narrator pain, but he recognizes that human beauty does not reside in intellectual brilliance. To be unable to bear one's mental mediocrity would itself be a deeper mediocrity of soul. Moral beauty requires strength and transformed action, not merely a refined capacity to see what one lacks.

The notebook consequently asks more of beauty than pleasure in appearances, while refusing to discard appearances as irrelevant. Beauty can be perceived, inwardly elaborated, embodied in a person, and aimed at in conduct. These modes illuminate one another without supplying an effortless passage from admiration to goodness.

Places to read

1. 15 March 1833 · ¶1Beauty's eternal and divine participation requires more than comprehension of outward forms.
2. 21 March 1833 · ¶1Physical and ideal beauties are related through the receptive and transforming work of the soul.
3. 15 April 1833 · ¶1Natural beauty and bounty ground a hopeful argument voiced by the walking companion.
4. 27 March 1835 · ¶4The quiet keeping of oneself may contain more beauty than spectacular inward display.
5. 4 June 1835 · ¶1Moral beauty is separated from intellectual distinction and tested by actual change in conduct.

Translation in this edition

The English retains “physical beauties” and “ideal beauties” in March 1833, a plural pairing worth preserving. In June 1835 “la beauté de l'homme” and “la beauté morale” shift the criterion from literary productions to the person and their actions.

Use in the book

Fusées XVI first applies the definition to a woman's face, read as the most interesting sensible object in society. That framing reveals the position of a desiring observer and objectifies its subject; it is not a gender-neutral account of perception. The face may suggest exhaustion after pleasure or, oppositely, an eagerness for life embittered by deprivation. Beauty can sustain contradictory inferred histories.

The male face is then allowed spiritual needs, repressed ambitions and a rumbling unused power. The asymmetry is part of the argument: the speaker gives himself permission to read men through power and women through erotic provocation, while briefly admitting the possibility of a woman's different gaze. His conclusion in favour of Milton's Satan follows from this deliberately situated account of virile beauty, not from a demonstrated universal hierarchy of all beautiful things.

Other fragments prevent ‘my Beautiful’ from becoming the notebook's only aesthetic formula. Fusées XII finds surprise essential; Fusées XXII admires ships through regularity and symmetry; Fusées XIII describes Banville's poetry as luminous and happy. Fusées XVI itself does not exclude joy but calls it a vulgar ornament beside melancholy's illustrious companionship. Most importantly, the parenthesis about a bewitched mirror lets the observer wonder whether his preference has become an obsession. The definition is forceful enough to organize perception and self-questioning enough to disclose its cost.

Places to read

1. Fusées XVIJ’ai trouvé la définition du Beau, de mon Beau. — The possessive immediately qualifies the scope of the apparent discovery.
2. Fusées XVIquelque chose d’un peu vague, laissant carrière à la conjecture — Beauty gives interpretation room to move.
3. Fusées XVIl’idée d’une puissance grondante et sans emploi — Frustrated capacity enters the reading of masculine beauty.
4. Fusées XIIune partie essentielle et la caractéristique de la beauté — The irregularity note supplies a related but distinct criterion.

Translation in this edition

The edition distinguishes ‘the Beautiful’ from ‘Beauty’ where French form and capitalization call for it, and keeps the awkwardly emphatic ‘my Beautiful’. This is preferable to smoothing the whole opening into ‘my idea of beauty’, which would erase the little drama of discovery and qualification. ‘Misfortune’ for malheur resists narrowing it to sadness alone. The translation's ‘an object perceived by the senses’ also prevents objet sensible from being misread as an emotionally sensitive object.

Use in the book

The language of beauty is closely joined here to suitability, proportion, and order. In II.12.3, Ficino moves from what befits God to fittingness or beauty itself, which he identifies with God. In the providence chapter, the world's beauty lies in parts disposed for one another and for the whole, acting at suitable times and toward suitable ends. The vocabulary therefore includes utility and coherent arrangement rather than isolating beauty as an observer's pleasure in appearance.

This connection becomes especially important when something appears defective on its own. Ficino asks the reader to consider whether it contributes to the whole's good and adornment. That is his theological explanation of apparently disordered or unattractive particulars, not an identification of a benefit in every instance of suffering. The whole world also need not possess God's absolute perfection: its created beauty sufficiently indicates a higher source within the limits of a created work.

The correction from ut decuit to immo ut decet moves from “as was fitting” to “as is fitting,” avoiding the impression of a past standard that once governed God. Ficino then locates the source of fittingness in God as decor itself. The grammar contributes to the argument about underived necessity rather than merely decorating a statement about beauty.

Further passage references. II.12.3; II.13.14, 16–18, 20, 23–24

Selected annotated passages.

II.12.3. The tense correction and progression through the decor-family connect fitting action to God as its source.

Places to read

1. II.12.3What befits God is traced to fittingness or beauty itself.
2. II.13.17Natural beauty is joined to correct times, appointed forms and useful ends.
3. II.13.24Apparently defective parts are interpreted through the whole’s beauty and good.

Translation in this edition

II.12.3 deliberately moves through decuit, decet, decorum and decor. The English “fitting” and “Beauty” should retain that progression without treating every use of decet as an aesthetic observation. The providential claim about the whole is Ficino’s explanation, not a demonstrated benefit of each particular misfortune.

The supplied English uses “beautiful” for decorum and “Beauty itself” for decor. The Latin link with what befits or is appropriate remains important alongside aesthetic beauty.

culpare / deformis

culpare / deformis. Printed forms: culpanda; deformia.

Find fault with / misshapen or unbeautiful. What appears blameworthy in isolation is evaluated by Ficino in relation to the whole’s order; the theological claim remains his. References: II.13.23, II.13.24. See Beauty and fittingness.

decet / decor

decet / decor. Printed forms: decentia; decet; decor; decorum; decuit.

It is fitting / fittingness or beauty. The correction from past to present and the cognate nouns connect fitting action with God as its source. References: II.12.3. See Beauty and fittingness.

oportere / debere / decere

oportere / debere / decere. Printed forms: debet; decere; decet.

To be necessary, due, or fitting, with inferential and evaluative force. It is said to be unfitting for intelligent minds to serve a mindless first mover; the inference uses a hierarchy of perfection. References: II.6.6, II.9.5, II.9.15. See Beauty and fittingness.

orno

orno. Printed forms: ornetur.

To adorn or equip with form. Matter’s changing adornment requires an external formative source; the verb’s aesthetic colouring does not replace the causal question. References: I.3.6. See Beauty and fittingness.

pingere / figurare

pingere / figurare. Printed forms: figurant; pingunt.

To paint and give figure. The souls of creatures adorn their bodies through implanted seeds under the sphere-soul's guidance. References: IV.1.34. See Beauty and fittingness.