The beautiful itself

Use in the book

The final object is introduced as the thing for whose sake all earlier labours occurred. Diotima specifies it through a careful series of exclusions. It always is, neither comes to be nor perishes, and neither grows nor diminishes. It is not beautiful in one respect and ugly in another, beautiful now but not later, beautiful relative to one thing and ugly relative to another, or beautiful here but ugly there according to different observers. These are different qualifications of ordinary beauty; reducing them all to beauty is subjective loses the argument’s precision.

Nor is the beautiful itself a face, hands, a bodily constituent, an account or a knowledge. It is not located in an animal, earth, heaven or some other thing. The positive description gives it independent, uniform being, while all the other beautiful things share in it. Their appearance and disappearance do not enlarge, diminish or otherwise affect it. This is more than an assertion that one especially attractive object never ages.

The exclusion of knowledge does not mean that beauty cannot be known. The ascent has just led to a single knowledge of it, and the recap ends in learning what beautiful is. Object and cognition are distinguished. The later language of purity, unmixedness and the divine likewise describes what is seen, not merely the viewer’s psychological calm.

Earlier Pausanias had said an action itself by itself is neither beautiful nor shameful. The same phrase there brackets a bare action from its manner of performance; it does not already assert an independent metaphysical entity. Context determines what itself by itself accomplishes. At the summit its force is specified by the sustained contrasts with dependent and changing particulars.

Places to read

1. 180e–181aA bare action’s beauty depends on how it is done.
2. 183dPausanias’ ordinary use of itself by itself must be distinguished from the later description.
3. 210e–211b2Temporal, relational, bodily and dependent forms of beauty are excluded.
4. 211b–211dParticipation, the final study and the life worth living.
5. 211e–212a2Pure divine beauty leads to true virtue rather than images.

Translation in this edition

The edition renders the phrase itself by itself consistently and the adjective single in form. It does not insert a capitalized noun Form into every occurrence. At 211c its what beautiful is follows the supplied accentuation and is identified in the note as an interpretation.

αὐτὸ καθ’ αὑτό (auto kath’ hauto)

auto kath’ hauto — Itself by itself; a phrase record for independence, whose force depends on context.

• 211b — αὐτὸ καθ’ αὑτὸ μεθ’ αὑτοῦ. The beautiful is itself by itself with itself, rather than in another thing.

Read: The beautiful itself.

αὐτὸ τὸ καλόν (auto to kalon)

auto to kalon — The beautiful itself, distinguished from its changing, relative or embodied instances.

• 211d — αὐτὸ τὸ καλόν. The object whose contemplation makes life worth living.

Read: The beautiful itself.

γίγνομαι (gignomai)

gignomai — To come to be; expressly denied of the final beautiful.

• 211a — οὔτε γιγνόμενον οὔτε ἀπολλύμενον. Neither becoming nor perishing marks its contrast with changing beautiful things.

Read: The beautiful itself.

μονοειδής (monoeidēs)

monoeidēs — Single in form; not changing character across perspectives or participants.

• 211b — μονοειδὲς. The beautiful itself is characterized as single in form and always being.
• 211e — μονοειδὲς κατιδεῖν. The final invitation repeats its single-form character.

Read: The beautiful itself.