In Plato, the discussion of beauty predominates and is full of wit and contradiction. For example, a beautiful soup pot is not as beautiful as a person, and a beautiful girl is not as beautiful as a god; all things are beautiful because "beauty itself imparts its characteristics to a thing, and that thing becomes beautiful." That is to say, there is an essence that makes things beautiful, and beauty in its various forms is but a reflection of it. Beautiful things are imitations of beauty itself. In Plato's words, a painter's bed imitates a carpenter's bed, and a carpenter's bed imitates a Li-style bed. The ideal bed is beauty itself. Unlike Plato, the Pythagoreans saw beauty as a harmonious proportion, just as they saw the origin of all things as "number." The beautiful body is the proper proportion of the parts, and the beautiful music is the harmony between the various tones, and they even concluded that the sphere is the most beautiful of all solids, and the circle is the most beautiful of all flat figures.

The former point of view points out the imitation principle of beautiful things, and the latter theory points out the formal law of beauty. Among Greek artists, imitation became a universal aesthetic principle, Milon tried to express the beauty of body dynamics, Pythagoras explored how to express the expressive power of human hair, tendons and blood vessels, and Lissip slightly increased the proportion of the human body Adjust to make it look slender and moving, with an elegant posture. On the one hand, painters are proud to draw realistic spatial effects; on the other hand, beauty itself, as an ideal, often makes artists go beyond imitations and pursue the idea of ​​beauty. The question we need to think about, then, is why did Greek art and aesthetics take such a path? The answer to this question touches on the origins of Western culture. As a result, our appreciation of Western aesthetic landscapes turns to the retrospect of historical landscapes.

In Plato, the discussion of beauty predominates and is full of wit and contradiction. For example, a beautiful soup pot is not as beautiful as a person, and a beautiful girl is not as beautiful as a god; all things are beautiful because "beauty itself imparts its characteristics to a thing, and that thing becomes beautiful." That is to say, there is an essence that makes things beautiful, and beauty in its various forms is but a reflection of it. Beautiful things are imitations of beauty itself. In Plato's words, a painter's bed imitates a carpenter's bed, and a carpenter's bed imitates a Li-style bed. The ideal bed is beauty itself. Unlike Plato, the Pythagoreans saw beauty as a harmonious proportion, just as they saw the origin of all things as "number." The beautiful body is the proper proportion of the parts, and the beautiful music is the harmony between the various tones, and they even concluded that the sphere is the most beautiful of all solids, and the circle is the most beautiful of all flat figures.

The former point of view points out the imitation principle of beautiful things, and the latter theory points out the formal law of beauty. Among Greek artists, imitation became a universal aesthetic principle, Milon tried to express the beauty of body dynamics, Pythagoras explored how to express the expressive power of human hair, tendons and blood vessels, and Lissip slightly increased the proportion of the human body Adjust to make it look slender and moving, with an elegant posture. On the one hand, painters are proud to draw realistic spatial effects; on the other hand, beauty itself, as an ideal, often makes artists go beyond imitations and pursue the idea of ​​beauty. The question we need to think about, then, is why did Greek art and aesthetics take such a path? The answer to this question touches on the origins of Western culture. As a result, our appreciation of Western aesthetic landscapes turns to the retrospect of historical landscapes.