Plato on Art and Beauty

This unique collection of essays presents various aspects of Plato's views on art and beauty, not only in the Republic but in the Ion, Phaedrus, Symposium, Laws and related dialogues. The selection aims to address a representative range of issues including the moral status of music and visual art, the allure of artistic and sensual beauty, censorship, the relations between aesthetic and moral emotions, truth and deception in art, and the contest between philosophy and poetry. The essays are not exclusively interpretive, although some (such as those by G. R. F. Ferrari, Jessica Moss and C. D. C. Reeve) are close scholarly readings of specific dialogues. Others authors, including M. F. Burnyeat and Stephen Halliwell, aim to locate Plato's thinking on art and beauty within wider controversies in ethics, politics and aesthetics. A common thread uniting them is their appreciation of the extent to which certain of Plato's texts are contributions to aesthetic and moral psychology, as much as exercises in metaphysics and epistemology.