value of education
...ine; it renews our faith and pursuit of pure understanding. Beauty appeals directly to the human sensory apparatuses and emotive responses; we experience beauty through sensation. It should be apparent that, despite Plato's reliance on it, beauty cannot be intrinsically valuable or as important as pure knowledge/intelligence; beauty appeals to the senses yet points towards Being. In this, both beauty and truth point to the same thing. For Plato and Western thought at large, however, we cannot equally value truth and beauty on the same level. Being can be understood to the utmost extent through pure understanding and knowledge; Being radiates through beauty but cannot be understood through it. Beauty renews our faith in Being, but does little to help us understand it. Thus, Plato must keep truth and beauty distinct from each other else the sensuous would have to be valued in the same manner as the thing it points to. Beauty is intended to elevate us beyond the sensuous and return us to truth. First off, Plato's conception of beauty directly references things; this or that thing or idea is beautiful. Things and ideas refer to the pure essences we have been considering. Through our waking experience, we experience manifestations of these essences but never experience the essences themselves; we are necessarily removed from this pure understanding. Given this, we can either relinquish our ideas of pure essences, simply accepting things as they appear, or we can dwell on the conception of essences and attempt to grasp reality as it really is. It should be obvious wh...