Where the value of beauty comes from
On the axis: Beauty in life · a beautiful thing
Is beauty a real perfection of things, or merely a pleasure of taste? If it is all a matter of taste, its claim to count in a flourishing life weakens.
Justification
Beauty plays a unique anagogic role: it is the only Form that shines forth in the sensible and, through erōs, sets the soul moving toward the intelligible. Yet it remains subordinate to the Good and to justice: seductive poetry is banished from the city if it corrupts the soul, and the beautiful is valuable only insofar as it leads to the true and the good.
Phaedrus, 250d-251b · Republic, III, 401b-403c
Justification
There is an objective hierarchy of pleasures and of the soul's objects: in the , only the philosopher, who has tasted all three kinds of pleasure, can judge which are truest, and his verdict ranks the pleasures of knowledge highest. Pleasures are not of equal worth, and competence to rank them belongs only to the well-ordered soul.
Republic, IX, 580d-583a · Philebus, 51a-53c
leads to: Hierarchy of tastes