>>24476268 (OP)
I asked AI about this quote and it said:
The sentence “Beauty is natural superiority” does not appear anywhere in the Greek texts of Plato or in the standard English translations of his dialogues. The earliest verifiable source for wording that closely matches the modern quotation is Joseph Addison’s essay in The Spectator, No. 39 (14 April 1711), where he writes that “Beauty is a kind of natural superiority.” Later writers—Francis Hutcheson, for example—reused Addison’s phrasing, and twenty-first-century quotation sites have gradually misattributed it to Plato, probably because “beauty” is a theme that Plato does discuss at length.
As Addison uses it, the sentence is a social observation rather than a philosophical thesis: physical attractiveness, being immediately perceived and requiring no acquired skill or rank, confers an effortless advantage over others because people spontaneously defer to what pleases the eye. It is not a claim about intrinsic moral worth or about the metaphysical status of beauty. Plato, by contrast, treats beauty (kallos) as a pointer toward the Forms and ultimately toward the Good; for him, the experience of beauty can elevate the soul, but he never reduces it to a worldly “superiority.” Thus, attributing Addison’s remark to Plato not only misquotes the source but also misrepresents Platonic aesthetics.
