Plato's Aesthetics

Plato's aesthetics revolves around the idea that beauty is linked to the world of forms—ideal, unchanging concepts that exist beyond our physical reality. For Plato, art is a reflection of these forms, but it's also an imitation of the material world, which is itself an imperfect copy of the true forms. As a result, he believed that art could mislead us and drag us away from understanding deeper truths. Ultimately, he valued the pursuit of truth and moral goodness over mere artistic pleasure, seeing art as potentially distracting or even harmful if it does not uplift the soul.