Table of Contents

1. The Problem with Beauty
2. Beauty in Greek
3. The Nature of Beauty
4. Beauty Transfigured
5. Beauty Across Cultures
6. Greek Beauty Today

About the Author

David Konstan is Professor of Classics at New York University and Emeritus Professor of Classics at Brown University. His previous books include Before Forgiveness, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks, and Friendship in the Classical World.

Reviews

"In his absorbing "Beauty: The Fortunes of an Ancient Greek Idea," the classicist David Konstan sets out to recover ancient Greek notions of beauty in both life and art. Did the Greeks have a coherent concept of "beauty" at all, Mr. Konstan asks, and how far does it overlap with modern Western ideas of beauty?" --The Wall Street Journal--
"Only a scholar as sure-footed as Konstan would attempt such a philologically rigorous inquiry in a book series targeted at general readers (Oxford's acclaimed Onassis Series in Hellenic Culture). Somehow, Konstan carries it off, keeping up a brisk pace as he leads his readers, text by text, through the maze, briefly and breezily contextualizing each new passage as it comes in view." --The Times Literary Supplement
"Beauty offers an immense variety of both thoughts and thinkers...As beauty is a rather complex topic, this is a complex, but readable, book--it is challenging but interesting...As well as philological detail, Professor Konstan also brings a considerable amount of recent scholarship into the discussion, making Beauty a valuable book for students of philosophy or Classics." --Minerva
"A breathtakingly wide view of beauty as the ancient Greeks conceived it, from Homer to the Septuagint, and from Plato to Derrida and Bourdieu-this is the work of a scholar with an immense command of classical literature and its legacy in our own time. This book should be required reading for anyone working in aesthetics, ancient or modern. Readers will never again be able to imagine beauty shorn completely of its historical ties to passion and desire." --Paul
Woodruff, The University of Texas at Austin
"An eloquent contribution to the new literature on beauty. Konstan asks a basic question: How well do ancient notions of beauty translate into our modern lexicon? The result is a rich sampling of sources from Homer to the Hebrew Bible to the Byzantine Church Fathers, expertly traced through a series of philological probes. Because ancient beauty was not limited to art or reduced to a focal concept of any kind, looking into the past like this provides a valuable
and often surprising reminder of the limits of our own aesthetic intuitions. Konstan's study will be a critical resource for anyone interested in this fascinating set of issues." --James I. Porter,
University of California at Irvine
"Only a scholar as sure-footed as Konstan would attempt such a philologically rigorous inquiry in a book series targeted at general readers (Oxfords acclaimed Onassis Series in Hellenic Culture) ... Somehow, Konstan carries it off, keeping up a brisk pace as he leads his readers, text by text, through the maze, briefly and breezily contextualizing each new passage as it comes in view." --James Romm, Times Literary Supplement
"An eloquent contribution to the new literature on beauty. Konstan asks a basic question: How well do ancient notions of beauty translate into our modern lexicon? The result is a rich sampling of sources from Homer to the Hebrew Bible to the Byzantine Church Fathers, expertly traced through a series of philological probes. Because ancient beauty was not limited to art or reduced to a focal concept of any kind, looking into the past like this provides a valuable
and often surprising reminder of the limits of our own aesthetic intuitions. Konstan's study will be a critical resource for anyone interested in this fascinating set of issues." --James I. Porter,
University of California at Irvine
"An eloquent contribution to the new literature on beauty. Konstan asks a basic question: How well do ancient notions of beauty translate into our modern lexicon? The result is a rich sampling of sources from Homer to the Hebrew Bible to the Byzantine Church Fathers, expertly traced through a series of philological probes. Because ancient beauty was not limited to art or reduced to a focal concept of any kind, looking into the past like this provides a valuable
and often surprising reminder of the limits of our own aesthetic intuitions. Konstan's study will be a critical resource for anyone interested in this fascinating set of issues." --James I. Porter,
University of California at Irvine
"David Konstan's book addresses the linguistic roots of the issues around the notion of beauty and offers an impressive analysis and history of the idea of beauty, from Ancient Greece to the present day. Konstans erudition is striking: with knowledge of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, he offers a remarkable examination of the uses of the equivalent words for beauty in classical literature, the Bible, and beyond." --Ines Morais, Forma de Vida