The role of beauty in Plato's philosophy

The final thesis aims to develop the question of beauty in Plato. To do so, it tries to gain a proper interpretative access to Plato`s dialogues in the first chapter, and concludes that as they are principally unified on the basis of the likeness of the cave, they can be separated into three structurally different groups with distinct purposes - elenctic, anabatic and katabatic. The second chapter analyzes the dialogue Hippias Major, and traces the ontological implications of its negative outcome, as well as suggestions in relation to which other notions Plato tried to develop his conception. It then analyzes the dialogue Phaedo and tries to reconstruct the basics of Plato's theory of forms, beauty being one of them. The third chapter analyzes the question of beauty in the dialogues Symposium and Phaedrus in more detail, i.e in relation to love, good, happiness, begetting, soul and speech. Beauty is said to be shining both as form and in body, and eros can thus be mistaken in the source of its excitement. Most importantly the erotic movement of the soul is described as partner. It unifies the tripartite soul, different souls, including divine ones and, to a certain extent, even the soul and corrporeality. These analyses unravel in the fourth chapter beauty as, at the same time, cause and purpose of a..