Abstract: Plato explored deeply into beauty and art,the two essential categories in esthetics,for the first time from the philosophical perspective.He thought that beauty itself was the reason to create beauty,and art was the copy of realistic world modeled by beauty itself and that beauty and art belonged to two separated world.The separation of beauty and art was the foundation for Plato’s theory that art possesses beauty itself,which was a bridge to link the logos world and art world theoretically.Whether he was exploring beauty itself from a philosophical perspective or he was calling that art should take beauty itself as its model,Plato’s purpose was to cultivate harmonious city-state citizens and serve his political ideal and philosophical pursuit.So Plato was the first to discover esthetics problems as well as the first to really and greatly deny art.

Key words: Plato, beauty itself, art, art, essence