Opining Beauty Itself by Naomi Reshotko;

Author:Naomi Reshotko;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Diotima acts as if Socrates and others might not be able to glimpse beauty itself:

[Beauty itself], if ever you see it. … what then do we suppose it would be like if someone succeeded in seeing beauty itself [pure and not contaminated with mortal nonsense] but were able to catch sight of the uniformity of divine beauty itself? (211d2–212a1, Rowe’s translation; emphasis added)30

There is no assumption that human beings actually succeed in reaching and seeing beauty itself. Similarly, it is unlikely that human beings ever entertain epistemological states that fix on all of, and only, what is true. Our doxastic systems will always be comprised of reasoned true beliefs that are mixed with other beliefs that are less true and less reasoned.

In the cases of both beauty and knowledge, it seems, the pure Form is the goal. It is an aspiration that leads us to recognize that there is a stairway to climb (it frees us from double ignorance). Further, it helps us maintain our motivation to continue to climb it, no matter how arduous it proves to be, as we recognize the advantages of improving our epistemological states—our doxastic mass—and therefore having a more true, more reasoned, doxastic structure. Nevertheless, Diotima hints that we might never reach the top and see beauty or have knowledge.

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