What is the difference between sensible beauty and the beauty of things outside the sense?.
Sensible beauty is just that: beauty perceived through the senses. Beauty outside the senses is the beauty seen when what is perceived by the senses is not taken into consideration. Plotinus said that anyone can experience sensible beauty; all that one must do is open his or her eyes and ears and it will be found. That is simple enough for sensible beauty, but there is a higher form of beauty that must be considered.
Plotinus brings our minds to the beauty of other things, such as beautiful ways of life and beautiful virtues; beauty in the realm of superior being. We cannot perceive that kind of beauty through our senses, can we? Yet, we know that things like this can be beautiful. He tells us that it is within the soul (mind) that we determine if these things outside the senses are beautiful. From here, Plotinus shows us a journey to wisdom through perceptions.
It starts with sense, a lower form to Plotinus, but it is the only place to start. From there he goes on to tell us that there is a part of our soul that sees these "more distant beauties", and that our soul must rise above physical senses to understand them. The soul sees the beauty in others that it has within itself. This is the only goal of our journey, to make our own souls more beautiful so that we can perceive the beauty in things outside of the senses.
Focusing only on sensible beauty will make a soul ugly, said Plotinus, in that it will no longer be able to see the things outside of the sense, which takes a beautiful soul. So then, would it be fair to say that the opposite is true? A person who turns away from sensible beauty and strives for a higher form, would have a beautiful soul? Plotinus thought so. "Greatness of the soul is simply disdain for the things here in the realm of the body. Wisdom is the act of mind turning away from things below and leading the soul to things above.