Beauty: Theology, Ethics or Aesthetics

Is beauty simply “in the eye of the beholder” or is it something more? Is it a way to God, a moral precept, or the specific locus for a unique kind of pleasure? This course examines a variety of subjective and objective views of beauty in the history of Western philosophy and theology from antiquity to the present (e.g. in the thought of Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, Kant, Weil, Barth, and Balthasar). It will also consider the implications of these views of beauty for the production of the visual arts, music, and literary culture in Western religion and society.