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How did Plotinus connect artistic beauty with a higher spiritual beauty?

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aesthetics Edmund Burke, detail of an oil painting from the studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1771; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

The philosopher Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism, departed from the view of his predecessor Plato—who often regarded art as a deceptive imitation—by attributing a mystical and sacred quality to artistic beauty.1

Plotinus proposed that the beauty found in the physical world is a reflection of a higher, spiritual beauty originating from the realm of ideas or Intellect. According to his work, the Enneads, artistic beauty serves as an enigmatic embodiment of pure spirit. By engaging in the intellectual contemplation of beautiful art, individuals can gain insight into this higher realm and potentially achieve a mystical union with that transcendent beauty.12

In this framework, Plotinus emphasized that the spiritual aspiration involved in intellectual analysis and intuition allows the mind to ascend beyond the material world. Consequently, for Plotinus, artistic beauty is not merely a mundane appearance but a sacred, abstract bridge that points the mind toward the ultimate source of reality.1