Beautiful women, beautiful days, beautiful plays: The manifestations of beauty are many. But what is it that makes all beautiful things beautiful? What is the one among the many? In this episode we contemplate the nature of beauty with the help of Plato's The Symposium.

Valentine's Day marks a time or season; a time for love. One of the earliest soliloquies on love comes from Socrates. In one of Plato's great dialogs, The Symposium, Socrates gathers with some friends for a dinner party - really more a drinking party. They contemplate the nature of love. In today's episode we contemplate the beginning of Socrates' soliloquy on love.

In episodes 8 & 9, we looked at what the nature of beauty says about us (philosophical anthropology), and what the nature of beauty says about the world (something moves behind the scenes). In this episode we encounter the greatest philosopher of all time, Socrates, as we seek the true nature of beauty.

In our last episode we laid out the thesis that we need beautiful things, even more than we need things with a use. In this episode we see that the light of beauty illuminates more than he whom it shines upon. Beauty not only strengthen us against the world, the flesh, and the devil, but can transform us; allowing us to see more than meets the eye.

The demon Screwtape, in C. S. Lewis's book The Screwtape Letters, says, "Music and silence—how I detest them both!" In this episode we look at how the Christmas season stands for those things the demons hate, namely, silence and music. It's the music of Christmas, the logic of Christmas, the Logos, that the demonic noise is meant to drown out.

From Aristotle to Camus, wisdom has taught us that our destinies are related to our identities. Our pursuit of beauty reveals a truth about our natures (our identities), namely, that we are not animals.

It is science that is beautiful, not beauty that is scientific. This is why beauty cannot be found in a test tube (as we discussed in the previous episode). In this episode we look at the nature of beauty and confront one of the deep paradoxes of philosophy, namely, that there is nothing more useful than the useless.

In this episode we celebrate Thanksgiving in the light of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. The story of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is reminiscent of the stories of Flannery O'Connor and the Coen Brothers. Their sorties are often violent, taking a sober look at the human condition and evil. But there is a moment in the story when grace - the the hand of God - breaks into one's life. Gratitude, Thanksgiving, and Del Griffith: on today's Red Letter Philosophy.

In this episode we look at attempts to explain beauty away scientifically and evolutionarily. We ask the question, what is it about beauty that sets it apart? What is it about beauty that makes it a special kind of special? We suggest that it's an awareness of something that cannot be captured in a test tube.

Beauty is strange; being both objective and subjective. Our experience of beauty suggests that not everything real can be understood scientifically. Beauty cannot be found in a test tube, and yet it is objective. Perhaps Plato is right? Perhaps the experience of beauty is key to perceiving another reality, a higher world?