The Concept of Beauty in Fih-e Ma Fih: A Philosophical Analysis

In this essay, we have tried to find Rumi`s views on the concept of beauty. We have focused on Fih-e Ma Fih and limited our research to it. For this purpose, we have put forward six questions from a contemporary viewpoint toward “beauty” and attempted to find Rumi’s (probable) answers to them in Fih-e Ma Fih. Accordingly, through a philosophical analysis, we traced out the six following questions: What kind of property is beauty ontologically? What does the experience of beauty feel like? Is beauty relative or absolute? Is beauty an equivocal concept or a univocal one? Is the relation between beauty and ugliness the subject of contrariety or of contradiction? And finally, what are the types of beauty in terms of its possessor? It seems that Rumi considers beauty an objective property, not a subjective or objective-subjective one. He holds that beauty is delightful and supposes that it is absolute. He believes that beauty is an equivocal concept and considers its relation with ugliness to be the subject of contradiction. Finally, he argues that beauty can be ascribed to mental states, abstract objects, and physical objects.