The object of Alcibiades' love

Abstract

Plato is a notoriously slippery author, but I do not blame his own obscurity for making him particularly elusive on the subject of aesthetics. Rather, there is something tricky and almost incoherent in the Greek approach to value. A great range of things was deemed to have aesthetic value, usually defying our ability to find any coherent linking threat. There were certain types of things that time and again are numbered among kala, among fine or beautiful things. Among them are attractive animate and inanimate bodies, objects well adapted to their roles, personal character and qualities of character, laws and customs, and knowledge. Much has to do with whatever it is that has the potential to inspire us, and whatever it may be that has the potential to lead us to those sources of inspiration