[Revised entry by Nickolas Pappas on July 22, 2024.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
If aesthetics is the philosophical inquiry into beauty, or another aesthetic value, and art, then the striking feature of Plato’s dialogues is that he devotes as much time as he does to both topics and yet treats them oppositely. Art, mostly as represented by poetry, is closer to a greatest danger than any other phenomenon Plato speaks of. Beauty is close to a greatest good. Can there be such a thing as “Plato’s aesthetics” that contains both positions?…

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