“Grace That Shimmers on the Surface of Beauty”: Beyond Platonic-Aristotelian Form, a Stoic Vision of Primary Causality

Abstract

Plotinus the Neoplatonist speaks of the “grace that shimmers on the surface of beauty”1 love. By a natural movement, the soul ascends, thanks to the wings given to it by the giver of this gracious love. Along the way of ascent, the impetus to contemplate the giver directly is gradually bestowed. The vision of spiritual beauty in the audible and visible is indeed a premonition of what lies behind the world of Forms; but “form is only the trace of that which has no form,” says Plotinus.2 The experience of the grace immanent in beauty is thus precisely what directs us to that transcendent source that both engenders form and also bestows the grace shimmering upon its beautiful surface.