What is, is The True
What is, is The Good
What is, is The Beautiful
What is, is The Real

— Anonymous

I recently finished reading Rebecca Goldstein’s Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away. In it there was much talk of The Beautiful, The True and The Good.

Besides Plato’s Divided Line, which was mentioned in The Republic and consists of four parts, the threesome of The Beautiful, The True and The Good is mentioned in various dialogues.

Being the quadraphile I am, I thought adding The Real to the threesome makes the now foursome nicely balanced. Usually one hears of just the three, without the fourth, but why is that?

Some argue loud and long that The Real has no part in this threesome of Universals, that the three are sufficient among themselves. Others disagree. Which side would you say I’d be on?

Further Reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendentals

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy_of_the_Divided_Line

Henry Rutgers Marshall / The True, The Good and the Beautiful (The Philosophical Review, Vol. 31, No. 5, Sep. 1922 pp. 449-470)

Michael Boylan / The Good, the True and the Beautiful

[*4.82, *8.72, *8.82]

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