The Sense of Beauty

Front Cover
Transaction Publishers, Jan 1, 2002 - Health & Fitness - 275 pages

From antiquity to the present, many have written on the subject of beauty, but precious few have done so with the capacity themselves to write beautifully. "The Sense of Beauty is "that rare exception. This remarkable early work of the great American philosopher, George Santayana, features a quality of prose that is as wondrous as what he had to say. Indeed, his summation remains a flawless classical statement. "Beauty seems to be the clearest manifestation of perfection, and the best evidence of its possibility. If perfection is, as it should be, the ultimate justification of being, we may understand the ground of the moral dignity of beauty. Be'auty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good."

The editor of this new edition, John McGormick, reminds us that "The Sense of Beauty is "the first work in aesthetics written in the United States. Santayana was versed in the history of his subject, from Plato and Aristotle to Schopenhauer and Taine in the nineteenth century. Santayana took as his task a complete rethinking of the idea that beauty is embedded in objects. Rather beauty is an emotion, a value, and a sense of the good. In this, aesthetics was unlike ethics: not a correction of evil or pursuit of the virtuous. Rather it is a pleasure that resides in the sense of self. The work is divided into chapters on the materials of beauty, form and expression. A good many of Santayana's later works are presaged by this early effort. And this volume also anticipates the development of art as a movement as well as a value apart from other aspects of life.

The work is written without posturing, without hectoring. Santayana is nonetheless able to give expression to strong views. His preferences are made perfectly plain. Perhaps the key is a powerful belief that beauty is an adornment not a material necessity. But that does mean art is trivial. Quite the contrary, the good life is precisely the extent to which such "adornments" as painting, poetry or music come to define the lives of individuals and civilizations alike. This is, in short, a major work that can still inform and move us a century after its first composition.

From inside the book

Contents

III
14
V
18
VI
23
VII
25
VIII
28
IX
31
X
35
XI
37
XL
146
XLI
152
XLII
155
XLIII
157
XLIV
160
XLV
163
XLVI
167
XLVII
171

XII
40
XIII
44
XIV
49
XV
53
XVI
56
XVII
62
XVIII
65
XX
68
XXI
72
XXII
76
XXIII
82
XXIV
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XXV
88
XXVI
91
XXVII
95
XXVIII
97
XXIX
100
XXX
106
XXXI
110
XXXII
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XXXIII
116
XXXIV
121
XXXV
126
XXXVI
131
XXXVII
133
XXXVIII
138
XXXIX
142
XLVIII
174
XLIX
176
L
180
LI
185
LII
192
LIII
198
LIV
201
LV
205
LVI
208
LVII
211
LVIII
214
LIX
218
LX
221
LXI
226
LXII
228
LXIII
233
LXIV
239
LXV
245
LXVI
250
LXVII
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LXVIII
256
LXIX
258
LXX
263
LXXI
266
LXXII
271
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Page 51 - The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem For that sweet odour which doth in it live. The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye As the perfumed tincture of the roses...
Page 105 - She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove, A Maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love : A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye! Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky.
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Page 68 - Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst, Where there aren't no Ten Commandments an...

About the author (2002)

George Santayana was for many years a professor of philosophy at Harvard University.

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