The beauty of the human soul as a concept of the philosophy of the Antiquity

Abstract

Since the 1960s. the interdisciplinary current “theological aesthetics” has been developing. It considers beauty as a theological issue. On the basis of its ideas, some authors have begun historical reconstruction of the moral and theological beauty category in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Now, one of the little-studied issues is the problem of the human soul’s beauty. The article overviews the concepts of the human soul’s beauty in the Antiquity. Included in the review are: Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus. Based on the analysis of individual fragments, a generalizing conclusion is proposed. Namely, the development of concepts related to the human soul’s beauty are to be understood as an increasingly explicit unfolding of the messages laid down in Plato’s dialogues.