The Relationship between Beauty and the Good in Plato's Ontology

Based on various interpretations, the relationship between the good and beauty in Plato’s philosophy fluctuates between being identical and different, and these interpretations lead to different consequences in Platonic ethics and aesthetics and suggest different relationships between the good and beauty and his metaphysics. Many interpreters believe that the truth and the good are the same in Plato’s view, while the relationship between beauty and the good is not clearly known to them. Through a study of the features of each of these two entities in various dialogs and contexts and the arguments adduced to describe the relationship between them, one can not only learn about the quality of this relationship but also determine the borderlines of Platonic aesthetics and, as a result, discover the place of beauty as the truth of being in this philosopher’s ontology. In this study, based on Plato’s prescriptive method in his seventh letter regarding the knowledge of every subject, the writers deal with the relationship between beauty and its equivalent concepts, such as pleasure, harmony, proportion, order, and unity. Then, by responding to the questions related to the difference of the good from beauty, they demonstrate that the other definitions and meanings of beauty can be interpreted in the same way, and that the truth of beauty is the same as the good in the sense of unity. Finally, they conclude that beauty is the cause of existence and the end of everything. Therefore, ethics and aesthetics are considered to be two dimensions of Plato’s unitary ontology.