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There are no beautiful ratios: the perception of transcendence between eros and logos

Publication |
2018

Abstract

The study scrutinizes definitions of beauty in Plato's dialogues Symposion, Ion, Timaeus and Hippias Major, drawing on phenomenological philosophy of perception (particularlly, by Jan Patočka, Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Renaud Barbaras). Using differences such as the Same-the Other or chronos-kairos, it focuses on the transcendence of beauty of mathematical entities and on analyticity-syntheticity of mathematics.

The goal of the study is to show that the beauty cannot be totalized because it transcends its mythical-poetical dimension (eros) as well as mathematical-logical dimension (logos). The non-negligible conditions of beauty (and mathematics) are embedded in life, freedom, blurring of boundaries and disintegration of constrained ratios or relations.