Volume 20, Issue 1, Fall 2015
Daniel L. Tate
Pages 21-41
Renewing the Question of Beauty
Gadamer on Plato’s Idea of the Beautiful
Posing the question of beauty anew, Gadamer pursues a hermeneutic remembrance of the original relation of beauty and truth forgotten by modern aesthetics. For Gadamer, the essential relation of kalos and aletheia is preserved, above all, in Plato. This essay elaborates his retrieval of Plato, re-thinking the splendor of beauty and the illumination of truth from being as an event of coming-to-presence. After discussing his engagement with Heidegger the essay reconstructs Gadamer’s interpretative argument, showing how he interprets the transcendence, radiance, and measure that characterize Plato’s idea of the beautiful as structural features of being as an event of truth.