I
really enjoyed the reading Symposium Diotima. The main thing that
stuck out to me were the stages to find beauty and love. Creating
fair thoughts, relating beauty one to another, making beauty a
general pursuit... ect but when it goes on to read,
“and
then if beauty of form in general is his pursuit, how foolish would
he be not to recognize that the beauty in every form is and the same!
And when he perceives this he will abate his violent love of the one,
which he will despise and deem a small thing, and will become a lover
of all beautiful forms; in the next stage he will consider that the
beauty of the mind is more honourable than the beauty of the outward
form”
it
made me think of how too often in our culture, our definition of
beauty is truly distorted. We are loving what many times should be
“despised” or “deemed a small thing” and actually rejecting
the beautiful and the virtuous. Its pretty sad that the easiest way
to get acknowledged in the art world is to create something, not
beautiful, but merely “edgy” or “original.” Originality is
our new pursuit, not virtue (or the truly pure and beautiful, love
itself, a reflection of the divine). The objective forms of beauty
are “been there and done that” and not exciting enough to further
pursue. Is it surprising that there is a lack of true beauty today?
The true beauty really is,
“a
nature which in the first place is everlasting, not growing and
decaying, or waxing and waning; secondly, not fair in one point of
view and foul in another, or at one time or in one relation or at one
place fair, at another time or in another relation or at another
place foul, as if fair to some and-foul to others, or in the likeness
of a face or hands or any other part of the bodily frame, or in any
form of speech or knowledge, or existing in any other being, as for
example, in an animal, or in heaven or in earth, or in any other
place; but beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which
without diminution and without increase, or any change, is imparted
to the ever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things.”
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