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Single Idea 5851

[filed under theme 21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 5. Natural Beauty ]

Full Idea

The pentathletes are the most beautiful, being at the same time naturally suited to both speed and force.

Gist of Idea

Pentathletes look the most beautiful, because they combine speed and strength

Source

Aristotle (The Art of Rhetoric [c.350 BCE], 1361b09)

Book Ref

Aristotle: 'The Art of Rhetoric', ed/tr. Lawson-Tancred,H.C. [Penguin 1991], p.89

A Reaction

This is still true. Watch the Olympics. The bodies we envy most belong to those who do a variety of disciplines. The most beautiful music fulfils a variety of functions (structure, as well as melody, drama, rhythm, harmony, novelty).

The 14 ideas with the same theme [beauty in people, life and landscape]:

185 Socrates despised good looks [Socrates, by Plato]
282 Non-physical beauty can only be shown clearly by speech [Plato]
183 Stage two is the realisation that beauty of soul is of more value than beauty of body [Plato]
184 Progress goes from physical beauty, to moral beauty, to the beauty of knowledge, and reaches absolute beauty [Plato]
2837 Nothing contrary to nature is beautiful [Aristotle]
5851 Pentathletes look the most beautiful, because they combine speed and strength [Aristotle]
4870 The most beautiful hand seen through the microscope will appear horrible [Spinoza]
7540 Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws [Goethe]
19578 Only self-illuminated perfect individuals are beautiful [Novalis]
22042 Natural beauty is unimportant, because it doesn't show human freedom [Hegel, by Pinkard]
18326 The beautiful never stands alone; it derives from man's pleasure in man [Nietzsche]
23921 Our feeling for natural beauty is different from the aesthetic emotion of art [Bell,C]
23929 We only see landscapes as artistic if we ignore their instrumental value [Bell,C]
18548 Natural beauty reassures us that the world is where we belong [Scruton]