Jeremy asked:

John Keats wrote in his poem 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' that 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty.' I believe that
beauty is not truth and that this is quite evident in modern society. What are your thoughts on this
issue? Are there any philosophical greats who would agree with me?

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When Plato called the Sophists 'panderers' and accused them of purveying appearances in place of
truth, he was responding to the same fault that you see with modern society. 'Everything is style but
no substance,' is a familiar cliche. Iris Murdoch has written a book The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato
Banished the Artists about Plato's low estimate of art in The Republic.

Why can't we value truth for truth's sake, and beauty for beauty's sake? To assume, as Keats
apparently did, that the only way to defend aesthetic value is to equate it with truth is to concede the
argument to Plato.

In my online notebook page for 16th April I challenge one half of Keats' assertion, focusing on the
narrower claim that 'the value of pictorial representation in art is a species of truth'. Possibly, that's
what prompted you to ask your question. I won't try to repeat the argument here.

Instead, I shall look at the other, more controversial half of the assertion, that 'truth is beauty'. Is that
true?'

I could be clever and say that the fact that Keats' remark is 'beautiful', i.e. poetic, does not make it
true. If I wrote, 'Every sentence consisting of eight words is true,' it would be reasonable for you to
point out that, even if by its own criterion of truth that sentence is true, I have given you no grounds
for believing that criterion to be true.

In science we seek the best explanationfor a given phenomenon. What makes a hypothesis win out
against all competitors is its elegance and simplicity. These are undoubtedly aesthetic attributes.
Does it follow, then, that the most elegant and simple theory is true? It is reasonable to assign the
higher degree of probability to the more aesthetically attractive theory, but that is all. Some times the
long-shot wins the race. Ugly theories can be true.

I suspect that what I have just written would be judged superficial, and that there is more to Keats'
remark. In that case, I wish someone would enlighten me.

Geoffrey Klempner