On Beauty (Plotinus, Ennead I.6)

In this session, we’ll listen to the tractate On Beauty from Plotinus’ Enneads (about 30 minutes). This is one of his most important writings, where he explores what beauty truly is and why it has such power over the soul.

Plotinus moves from visible beauty to moral beauty, and finally to absolute Beauty itself — showing how beauty awakens memory of the divine, draws the soul upward, and becomes the path of return to the Good.

Key themes include:

• Why beauty is not merely symmetry or proportion
• How the soul recognizes beauty through inner likeness
• Purification as the path to becoming beautiful
• The ascent beyond sense to the source of all Beauty

Here's the text and audio if you’d like to check them out beforehand:

Text: On Beauty
Audio: https://archive.org/details/enneads/enneads_05_plotinus_i6.flac

After listening, we’ll open a shared discussion around questions such as:

• What makes something truly beautiful?
• Why does beauty move the soul so deeply?
• How does Plotinus connect beauty, virtue, and purification?
• What does it mean to “become beautiful” inwardly?

Beginners are very welcome, but this is advanced material.
You’ll get much more out of the discussion if you check out this Introduction to Neoplatonism beforehand.