QuestionsIs beauty in the eye of the beholder?Beauty is not symmetry: it is form in matter
Is beauty in the eye of the beholder?Beauty is in things

Beauty is not symmetry: it is form in matter

Plotinus against the symmetry theory

Plotin c. 205 · c. 270For him, beauty is the presence of form and of the intelligible in matter, and the soul recognises it because it is kin to it.
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What it claims

Beauty is not symmetry: it is the presence of form, of the intelligible, in matter; and the soul recognises it because it is of the same kind.

Why

Things without parts, like sunlight or lightning, are beautiful: so beauty cannot be the symmetry of parts.

The same idea through history
Plato385 BCPlotinus starts from Plato: beauty down here comes from a Beauty that does not change (Symposium 211, Phaedo 100). He adds a criticism of the definition by symmetry, which Plato had not made.
Plotin253Enneads I, 6: the thesis presented here. Beauty is the presence of form (of the intelligible) in matter; the soul recognises it because it is kin to it.
In short

"Beauty is not symmetry: it is form in matter" is an argument by Plotin (Enneads I, 6, 'On Beauty' (c. 253), 253) on the question "Is beauty in the eye of the beholder?" (answer: beauty is in things). Its claim: Beauty is not symmetry: it is the presence of form, of the intelligible, in matter; and the soul recognises it because it is of the same kind. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P7). AskPhilosophy presents 2 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Enneads I, 6, 'On Beauty' (c. 253)
Valid with an implicit premise

People repeat that beauty is the right proportion of parts with a pleasing colour. Plotinus shows that this does not hold: a simple colour, the light of the sun, a flash of lightning have no parts, yet they are beautiful. The same face, with the same proportions, looks beautiful one day and not another. And a beautiful soul has neither size nor number. For him, what makes beauty is the presence of a form that brings unity to a matter. And we recognise it because our soul belongs to the same family as that form.

P1If beauty were the symmetry of parts, only a compound could be beautiful, never anything simple and without parts.
P2Yet simple things are beautiful: colours, the light of the sun, gold, lightning in the night, the stars.
P3The same face, whose proportion does not change, sometimes looks beautiful and sometimes not: symmetry itself owes its beauty to something else.
P4Virtue is a beauty of the soul truer than the beauties of bodies, and it has neither size nor number: proportion cannot account for it.
P5When a form enters a matter, it gathers the parts into a unity, and beauty takes its seat in that unity: bodies are beautiful by partaking of this form.
P6The soul recognises the beautiful at once, rejoices at the sight of what is akin to it, and shrinks back from the ugly.
P7 · implicit premiseIf symmetry is not what makes beauty, and if the form that unifies matter accounts for all beauties, then beauty is the presence of that form, which the soul recognises because it is kin to it.
Therefore beauty is not symmetry: it is the presence of form, of the intelligible, in matter; and the soul recognises it because it is of the same kind.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P7, the computer finds a case where symmetry is rejected, form unifies matter, the soul is kin to the beautiful, and yet beauty would be something other than that form (for example a pleasure response unrelated to it).
The first four premises let us reject symmetry (P1 and P2 give a contradiction if beauty is symmetry). To move on to 'beauty is form in matter' we must add P7: once symmetry is set aside, the unifying form is the only explanation left. That is the step Plotinus takes, without always spelling it out in one sentence.
Analogy. Saying that beauty is symmetry is like saying a fire is hot because of its shape. Plotinus answers: warmth comes from the fire present in the wood. In the same way, beauty comes from the form present in the body.

Objections

2

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

T
The Stoics (theory reported by Plotinus) 250 BC · attacks premise 1

The beauty of a body consists in the right proportion of its parts together with the charm of colours. Such beauty therefore exists only in a compound.

Plotin replies
P
Plotinus 253 · Plotinus' reply
The same proportion can leave a face sometimes beautiful, sometimes ugly. So beauty must be something other than proportion, and proportion is beautiful through something else.
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Plotinus writes that 'almost everyone' says this, without naming a school. It is usually attributed to the Stoics; a close idea is found in Cicero (On Duties I, 98: the beauty of the body comes from the fitting arrangement of the limbs). Plotinus answers first with simple cases (colour, light), then with the example of the face and of virtue.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Today many art theorists hold that proportion matters without explaining everything. The core disagreement: do we need a single principle behind all beauties (form, for Plotinus), or several explanations depending on the case? An open point.
David Hume 1757 · attacks premise 6

Beauty and deformity are not qualities in objects: they belong entirely to sentiment. What the soul feels before the beautiful is a feeling, not the recognition of a kinship with an intelligible world.

no reply
see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 1757, after the author's death (270).
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Hume does not speak of Plotinus; the objection is our pairing. Hume himself admits that certain qualities of objects are fitted to produce this feeling, which leaves room for a beauty that also depends on things.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Core disagreement: is the emotion before the beautiful the sign of a real beauty one recognises, or only a reaction of our nature? An open point: no widely accepted answer.