Can beauty make us better people? Plato, C. S. Lewis, and Iris Murdoch offer three very different answers.
By Jill Szoo Wilson
“When he looks at Beauty in the only way that Beauty can be seen … it will become possible for him to give birth not to images of virtue, but to true virtue.”
— Plato, Symposium 212a, trans. Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff
More than two thousand years ago, Plato proposed a startling possibility: that beauty and virtue belong to the same journey of human perception. Ancient Greek philosophers rarely treated beauty as a matter of taste alone. Discussions of beauty frequently extended into questions of truth, character, education, and the good life because many thinkers suspected that beauty might reveal something significant about the nature of reality itself. From Plato’s dialogues to contemporary moral philosophy, the relationship between beauty and goodness has remained a subject of enduring debate. Does beauty disclose moral truth, shape moral perception, or belong to a different sphere of human experience altogether?
The persistence of this question reflects a tension that most people recognize instinctively. Experiences of beauty often feel meaningful in ways that exceed simple enjoyment. A landscape, a musical composition, a work of architecture, or even an act of extraordinary generosity can evoke a sense that we are encountering something valuable, something worthy of admiration or reverence. Yet beauty and goodness do not always appear together. History offers many examples of beautiful works, compelling ideas, and charismatic individuals associated with cruelty, injustice, or deception. These experiences point in different directions. One suggests that beauty reveals something important about what is good. The other suggests that beauty and goodness may be separate forms of value whose relationship remains uncertain.
Philosophers have responded to this tension in different ways. Some have argued that beauty leads human beings toward truth and virtue. Others have understood beauty as a sign of realities that transcend ordinary experience. Still others have located the significance of beauty in its ability to transform perception, teaching people to attend more carefully to the world and to one another. The present essay examines three influential responses to this question. Plato treats beauty as a pathway toward moral and metaphysical truth. C. S. Lewis understands beauty as an experience of longing that points beyond itself toward transcendent reality. Iris Murdoch, drawing upon insights from Simone Weil, argues that beauty cultivates the habits of attention through which ethical perception becomes possible. Although these thinkers arrive at different conclusions, each seeks to explain why beauty exerts such a powerful influence upon human life.
While philosophical traditions differ concerning the precise relationship between beauty and ethics, the most enduring accounts suggest that beauty serves as a movement beyond the self, awakening desire for transcendent value, deepening moral perception, and expanding human capacities for judgment, care, and understanding.
Beauty as a Pathway to the Good: The Platonic Paradigm
The classical foundation for connecting beauty and ethics appears in the philosophy of Plato. Writing in fourth-century BCE Athens, Plato lived in a culture that prized beauty in art, architecture, poetry, rhetoric, and athletic achievement. Yet his interest in beauty extended far beyond questions of artistic excellence or physical attractiveness. Plato believed that the visible world points toward deeper realities that cannot be grasped through the senses alone. Just as a mathematical truth remains true regardless of who discovers it, Plato believed that realities such as Justice, Truth, and Goodness possess an enduring existence independent of individual opinion. Beauty belonged to this same realm of ultimate reality.
This conviction shapes Plato’s treatment of beauty in The Symposium, a philosophical dialogue organized around a banquet conversation concerning the nature of love. The dialogue culminates in a speech attributed to Diotima, a wise woman who teaches Socrates that love is fundamentally a desire for what is good, beautiful, and enduring. Human beings often begin by admiring particular beautiful things: a face, a body, a work of art, or a beautiful landscape. Yet Diotima argues that genuine philosophical growth requires moving beyond attachment to any single object of admiration. Beauty becomes the starting point of an intellectual and spiritual ascent.
Through what later scholars would call the “ladder of love,” the lover gradually learns to recognize beauty in broader and more profound forms. Admiration for one beautiful body gives way to an appreciation for beauty wherever it appears. Physical beauty leads to admiration for beautiful souls, noble actions, just institutions, and forms of knowledge. Each stage expands perception and draws the individual beyond private desire toward larger and more enduring realities. The journey culminates in the apprehension of what Plato calls Beauty itself: beauty that remains constant, unchanging, and complete, rather than appearing only in particular objects or experiences.
The language of Beauty itself can feel abstract to modern readers. Yet the intuition behind Plato’s argument remains surprisingly familiar. Consider a young man newly in love. At first, his attention rests upon a particular person. Yet before long, beauty seems to appear everywhere. He notices the first flowers of spring, the color of the evening sky, a piece of music that expresses what he struggles to say in words. He searches for beautiful songs to share with the beloved and seeks beautiful places in which to spend time together. The experience suggests that the beauty he recognizes in one person somehow participates in and even bears witness to a larger reality. Diotima’s ladder of love begins from this intuition. The lover starts with admiration for a particular instance of beauty and gradually learns to recognize beauty wherever it appears.
“Suddenly he will catch sight of a beauty amazing in its nature.”
— Plato, Symposium 210e
For Plato, this moment represents far more than an aesthetic experience. The encounter with Beauty itself transforms the way a person understands every other form of beauty. Individual beautiful things become reflections of a deeper reality. Beauty therefore functions as a guide that leads the soul toward wisdom and participation in what Plato calls the Good. Ethical development follows from this process because the pursuit of beauty gradually reshapes what a person values. The individual begins to value what is lasting over what is fleeting, what is true over what merely appears attractive, and what contributes to human flourishing over what serves immediate appetite.
The Platonic account establishes one of the strongest connections between beauty and ethics in the history of philosophy. Beauty matters because it reveals something true about the structure of reality itself. The beautiful and the good participate in the same order of being, making the pursuit of beauty inseparable from the pursuit of wisdom and virtue. Although later philosophers would challenge Plato’s confidence in objective beauty and metaphysical truth, his influence remains profound. Nearly every subsequent discussion of beauty and ethics unfolds in conversation with the possibility he first articulated: that the experience of beauty may guide human beings toward a deeper understanding of what is ultimately good.
Beauty as Longing for Transcendence: The Lewisian Paradigm
While Plato understood beauty as a pathway toward virtue and ultimate reality, C. S. Lewis approached the question through the phenomenon of longing. Writing in the twentieth century, Lewis inherited both the Christian tradition and centuries of philosophical reflection on beauty. Yet his account begins less with metaphysical speculation than with a recurring human experience. Throughout his life, Lewis found himself haunted by moments of beauty that seemed to awaken a desire no earthly object could satisfy. Understanding that desire became one of the central projects of his intellectual and spiritual life.
Lewis did not arrive at his conclusions through abstract speculation alone. Throughout childhood and adolescence, he experienced moments in which beauty awakened a longing that seemed larger than the object that inspired it. In his autobiography Surprised by Joy, he describes encounters with literature, mythology, music, and the natural world that left him with a sense of desire both intense and elusive. Images from Norse mythology, distant landscapes glimpsed in books, and passages of poetry would suddenly fill him with what he later called Joy. The experience arrived unexpectedly, lingered for a moment, and then vanished, leaving behind a longing for something he could neither possess nor fully explain. These experiences eventually led Lewis to ask a question that would shape much of his mature thought: Why do certain experiences of beauty awaken desires that nothing in ordinary life seems capable of satisfying?
Unlike Plato, Lewis does not begin with the question of what beauty is. He begins with the question of what beauty does. Certain experiences awaken a yearning that exceeds the object that first inspired it. A mountain range glimpsed in the distance, a melody heard at precisely the right moment, a line of poetry that lingers in memory long after it is read, or the sight of sunlight breaking through clouds may leave a person with the strange sense that something important has been encountered and yet remains beyond reach. Beauty delights, but it also unsettles. It awakens a desire that no particular beautiful thing can fully satisfy.
Consider a traveler standing on the rim of a canyon at sunset. For a few moments, the colors seem almost impossible. The light catches the stone, shadows deepen, and the landscape appears charged with significance. Yet what lingers afterward is the longing the view awakened. The traveler may struggle to name the source of that longing because the landscape itself appears complete. The beauty of the moment feels complete, yet it simultaneously awakens a desire for something beyond the moment itself. Lewis believed this paradox was one of the great clues of human experience.
“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing.”
— C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
This insight became central to Lewis’s understanding of beauty. Human beings often assume that the beautiful object itself is the source of the desire they feel. Lewis argues that the object functions more like a signpost. The beauty of a landscape, a symphony, or a beloved person awakens a desire that the object itself cannot satisfy because the desire ultimately reaches beyond the created world toward its Creator. Beauty matters precisely because it points beyond itself. The longing it awakens suggests that human beings were created for communion with God. The experience of longing becomes meaningful because it directs attention toward humanity’s true end.
Lewis’s argument therefore carries ethical implications as well as theological ones. The experience of beauty encourages humility because it reminds individuals that reality exceeds personal desire and control. Human beings do not stand at the center of the universe. They live within a larger order of meaning toward which beauty continually gestures. Ethical life emerges, in part, through learning to orient oneself toward that larger reality. In this respect, Lewis shares Plato’s conviction that beauty points beyond itself, though Lewis identifies the source of that transcendence not with the Platonic Form of Beauty but with God himself.
For Lewis, beauty ultimately serves as an invitation home. The longing awakened by beautiful things directs the soul toward its true home. Human beings desire more than the world can provide because they were created for communion with the One who stands beyond it. Beauty therefore possesses ethical significance because it draws the individual beyond self-sufficiency toward gratitude, reverence, worship, and a deeper awareness of humanity’s true end.
Beauty as Moral Attention: The Murdochian Paradigm
Twentieth-century moral philosophy witnessed a renewed effort to reconnect beauty and ethics through the concept of attention. Among the most influential voices in this conversation was Iris Murdoch, a British philosopher and novelist whose work challenged many prevailing assumptions about moral life. During the twentieth century, moral philosophy often emphasized choice, decision-making, and the exercise of individual will. Ethical questions frequently centered on what a person ought to do. Murdoch believed this emphasis overlooked something more fundamental. Before human beings act, they perceive. Before they make moral choices, they interpret the world around them. The quality of moral life therefore depends, in large measure, upon the quality of attention.
Murdoch drew significant inspiration from Simone Weil, whose writings treated attention as a form of spiritual and moral discipline. Building upon this insight, Murdoch argued that ethical growth requires learning to see others more truthfully, more patiently, and with greater freedom from the distortions created by self-interest. Human beings naturally interpret the world through the lens of personal desires, fears, ambitions, and grievances. As a result, people often see simplified versions of one another rather than the complex realities that actually stand before them. Moral development begins when perception becomes more accurate, more generous, and more attentive to what is truly there.
Unlike Plato, Murdoch does not ask whether beauty reveals a higher metaphysical reality. Unlike Lewis, she does not focus upon beauty as a sign of humanity’s longing for God. Her concern lies closer to ordinary experience. She asks what beauty does to the person who encounters it. Encounters with beauty can interrupt the constant tendency to place the self at the center of attention. For a moment, consciousness becomes absorbed in something other than its own concerns. Murdoch refers to this movement as “unselfing,” a temporary release from the habits of self-preoccupation that so often distort perception.
Consider a person standing quietly before a painting. For several minutes, the demands of the day recede into the background. Attention shifts toward color, texture, composition, and form. Or consider a hiker pausing beside a river, watching sunlight move across the surface of the water. The moment possesses no practical purpose. Nothing is being acquired, achieved, or controlled. Yet the experience draws attention outward. According to Murdoch, such moments matter because they train the mind to attend carefully to realities beyond itself. The same habits of perception that allow a person to appreciate beauty also contribute to the ability to see other human beings with greater honesty and care.
“The direction of attention is, contrary to nature, outward, away from self which reduces all to a false unity, towards the great surprising variety of the world, and the ability so to direct attention is love.”
— Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good
This insight forms the heart of Murdoch’s connection between beauty and ethics. Beauty serves as a discipline of perception. The attentive appreciation of art, nature, or human character trains individuals to recognize complexity, particularity, and value in the world around them. Moral excellence therefore emerges through practices of sustained attention that resemble aesthetic perception. Learning to see clearly becomes an ethical achievement.
For Murdoch, goodness and beauty belong to the same structure of experience because both require the individual to look outward with honesty and care. Ethical understanding grows through an increasingly accurate perception of reality and of other persons. Beauty matters because it cultivates the habits of vision through which such perception becomes possible. In this respect, Murdoch offers a distinctive answer to the ancient question of beauty and ethics. Beauty does not lead the soul upward toward the Platonic Good, nor does it awaken the longing for God that Lewis describes. Beauty teaches human beings how to attend. Through that discipline of attention, the world gradually comes into clearer focus, and moral understanding becomes possible.
Conclusion
The philosophical relationship between beauty and ethics has never yielded a single consensus, yet the enduring vitality of the debate reveals something important about human experience. Plato understood beauty as a path leading toward the Good itself. Lewis understood beauty as a summons toward the God for whom human beings were made. Murdoch located the ethical significance of beauty within the discipline of attention through which individuals learn to perceive reality more truthfully. Their conclusions differ, yet all three philosophers arrive at a similar insight: beauty changes the one who encounters it.
“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
— Philippians 4:8
The young lover who suddenly notices beauty everywhere, the traveler standing before a canyon at sunset, and the person standing quietly before a painting all experience the same fundamental movement. Attention shifts away from the self toward something perceived as valuable. Philosophers disagree about where that movement ultimately leads. Plato sees an ascent toward the Good. Lewis sees a longing for God. Murdoch sees the cultivation of truthful attention. Yet each account suggests that beauty matters because it enlarges human perception and reorients human desire.
The ancient question remains compelling because it touches a central feature of moral existence: the quality of our vision shapes the quality of our lives. Human beings become ethical not merely by following rules but by learning to see more clearly, attend more carefully, and respond more faithfully to the realities before them. Whether beauty reveals the structure of reality, awakens longing for transcendence, or trains attention toward the world and other persons, it continually invites human beings beyond the confines of self-interest. In this respect, the conversation between beauty and ethics continues because both concern the same enduring challenge: learning to recognize and respond to value wherever it appears.
For educators, students, and discussion groups, the following Socratic questions may serve as a starting point for further exploration.
Socratic Questions: Beauty, Ethics, and the Actor’s Attention
Beauty and Perception
- What makes something beautiful?
- Does beauty exist within an object, or does beauty emerge through the way we perceive it?
- Can two people encounter the same thing and experience different degrees of beauty? What accounts for the difference?
- Is beauty discovered, created, or recognized?
- Does beauty reveal something true about reality?
- Why do experiences of beauty often feel meaningful?
Beauty and Ethics
- What is the relationship between beauty and goodness?
- Can something be beautiful and morally corrupt at the same time?
- Why have philosophers repeatedly connected beauty to virtue?
- Does the experience of beauty change how we treat other people?
- Can beauty cultivate moral character?
- If beauty directs our attention toward something valuable, what happens when we fail to notice beauty?
Plato
- Why does Plato describe beauty as a ladder leading upward toward truth?
- What kinds of beauty occupy the lower rungs of Plato’s ladder? What kinds occupy the higher rungs?
- What does Plato mean when he suggests that beauty can lead us toward virtue?
- Is Plato describing aesthetic experience, moral development, or both?
C. S. Lewis
- Why does Lewis describe beauty as producing longing?
- What kinds of experiences awaken this feeling of longing?
- Why might beauty feel incomplete?
- If beauty points beyond itself, where is it pointing?
- Does longing help us become more ethical?
- Can desire for something transcendent change the way we live?
Iris Murdoch
- What does Murdoch mean by attention?
- Why does Murdoch believe moral failure often begins with failures of perception?
- How might learning to see more clearly lead to acting more ethically?
- What does Murdoch mean by “unselfing”?
- Can beauty teach us to notice realities that self-interest would otherwise overlook?
- What is the relationship between attention and love?
Theatre and Acting
- What happens to an actor’s work when attention remains focused on self-performance?
- What happens when attention shifts entirely to the partner?
- How does Meisner’s emphasis on “the reality of doing” resemble Murdoch’s concept of attention?
- Can truthful acting occur without genuine attention?
- What kinds of beauty emerge during a scene when actors stop trying to appear interesting?
- Is stage presence created by self-expression or by responsiveness?
- Why do audiences often describe truthful performances as beautiful?
- Is beauty in performance the result of technique, attention, relationship, or some combination of all three?
Final Synthesis
- Plato suggests beauty leads us toward virtue. Lewis suggests beauty awakens longing. Murdoch suggests beauty trains attention. Which account best explains your own experiences?
- What do these three philosophers agree upon despite their differences?
- If beauty consistently draws us beyond ourselves, what does that suggest about human flourishing?
- Could the actor’s task be understood as an ethical discipline of attention?
Jill Szoo Wilson 