Beauty and Being: Thomistic Perspectives

This book represents an attempt to distinguish and define what beauty is in metaphysical terms, to arrive at a better understanding of beauty as a transcendental property of being, and to establish beauty's place in philosophy alongside truth and the good through an exploration of whether there can truly be a philosophy of beauty, or whether beauty is merely a type of aesthetic. The first part of this work outlines the history of philosophical thought on the subject, through an introduction to three great theories of beauty harmony, form, and relationism and a discussion of the evolution of the fine arts. The second part introduces first the theory of aesthetics, then the relationship between nature, being, and beauty, and finally the controversy over whether beauty is natural or a product of human knowledge and experience. The third part moves towards a philosophy of beauty in a first sense: something that is real but immaterial, something that can be understood but not seen. This idea is constructed through an examination of beauty's relation to beings and existence, and finally through a juxtaposition of beauty with ugliness.

Piotr Jaroszy?ski is Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy of Culture at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin. He is editor-in-chief of Czlowiek w kulturze (Man in culture), a philosophical journal founded in 1992, and a member of the scientific committee of Powszechna Encyklopedia Filozofii (Universal encyclopedia of philosophy), published by the Polish Society of Thomas Aquinas, Lublin. He has lectured at universities around the world and is the author of numerous articles in philosophy. His several books include Metaphysics and Art (2002) and Science in Culture (2007), both translated by Hugh McDonald; with Czes?aw Jaroszy?ski, Kultura s?owa: Podstawy retoryki klasycznej (Culture of the word: The fundamentals of classical rhetoric; 2008); the forthcoming Metafizyka czy ontologia? (Metaphysics or ontology?); and, with Mathew Anderson, the forthcoming second English edition of Ethics: The Drama of the Moral Life.