Themes
Shelley's understanding of Beauty as an ideal and universal aspect, as opposed to the common understanding of the word as an aesthetic judgment of an object, was influenced by his knowledge of Plato's writings. However, where Plato believed Beauty should be sought after gradually in degrees until one can achieve true Beauty, a process made possible through dialectic, Shelley believed that Beauty could also be found through its earthly manifestations and could only be connected to through the use of the imagination. The origins of Shelley's understanding of Beauty and how to attain it can be found within "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty". The poem's theme is Beauty, but Shelley's understanding of how the mind works is different from Plato's: Plato wrote (principally in the Symposium) that Beauty is a metaphysical object existing independent of our experiences of particular concrete objects, while Shelley believed that philosophy and metaphysics could not reveal truth and that an understanding of Beauty was futile. Instead, Beauty could only be felt and its source could not be known.
Read more about this topic: Hymn To Intellectual Beauty
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