Isocrates on Beauty: Philosophy, Rhetoric, and the Aesthetics of Virtue

Abstract: This essay offers an account of beauty in Isocratean philosophia . On Isocrates’s account, beauty is based in the perception of sensations and matter. Perception of beauty elicits desire, making anything that is beautiful also highly valued. For this reason, he claims, virtue is valued because it is beautiful. Abstract virtue becomes intelligible to the senses by using logos to display beautiful, virtuous actions which can then be imitated. And since virtue is beautiful, it is desirable, thereby inducing students to study philosophy and endure the difficulty of acquiring virtue. This in turn informs Isocrates’s approach to rhetoric, whereby he privileges encomiastic argument over other forms of discourse since it is best suited to displaying beautiful, exemplary actions.