Beauty in Stoic Theological Arguments

This chapter is dedicated to analysing theological arguments in which aesthetic vocabulary plays a role. In these arguments, the beauty of the world is used to make an inference about its rational generation (an argument from design). To be precise, the arguments state that the presence of beauty in the world indicates that the world must have been generated by a rational principle and not by the random motion of atoms (as argued by the Epicureans). The chapter examines how beauty is used to form an inference here and investigates what theoretical implications this usage underpins. The findings here show some coherence with the findings in the previous chapters, especially in regard to the notion of good order or, to be more precise, well-functioning order. Thus, a systematic Stoic aesthetic theory begins to emerge.