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hello beauty is truth truth beauty that's all you know on earth and all you need to

know that was John Ke's emphatic conclusion to his

O to a Grecian urn. It seems to express Plato's theory of aesthetics

his idea that an apprehension of beauty is an apprehension of perfection and that all things in our shadowy

realm are partial representations of perfect forms that exist elsewhere.

Beauty is goodness and for Plato the ultimate of all the forms is the good. But does

beauty really have a moral quality and is it inherent in things or is it in the mind of

the observer? How much influence as Plato's ideas had on the history of aesthetics and what's been said to counter or develop them?

With me to discuss the philosophy beauties Angie Hobbs, lecture in philosophy at Warwick University.

Susan James, Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College University of London, and

Julian Bajini, editor of the Philosophist magazine.

Angie Hobbs, can you give us an overview of what's often called the key question in aesthetics.

Yes, I think there are three main, very briefly, I think there are three main sets of questions

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