The Metaphysics of Beauty

by Nick Zangwill

In chapters ranging from "The Beautiful, the Dainty, and the Dumpy" to "Skin-deep or In the Eye of the Beholder?" Nick Zangwill investigates the nature of beauty as we conceive it, and as it is in itself. The notion of beauty is currently attracting increased interest, particularly in philosophical aesthetics and in discussions of our experiences and judgments about art. In The Metaphysics of Beauty, Zangwill argues that it is essential to beauty that it depends on the ordinary features of things. He uses this principle to defend the notion of the aesthetic, to call for a version of aesthetic formalism, and to reconsider the reality of beauty. The Metaphysics of Beauty brings beauty to the center of intellectual consciousness in a manner informed by contemporary metaphysics and engages with beauty as an enduring object of human thought and experience.

Genres: Philosophy

240 pages, Hardcover

First published June 21, 2001

Reviews

[Yeliz]

This book's title is 'The Metaphysics of Beauty' and not 'The Metaphysics of Beauty: The Rhetoric of Sickness from Baudelaire to D'Annunzio', but for some reason it is listed as such on Goodreads. Decadent Genealogies: The Rhetoric of Sickness from Baudelaire to D'Annunzio is another book published by Cornell University Press.
I seem to have these administrative reviews, I guess such mistakes are common here.

I find the arguments somewhat convincing especially regarding the metaphorical descriptions of aesthetic concepts and the ineliminability of metaphors and the gap between our talk and thought in aesthetic descriptions. I wish he provided more examples for his arguments though in general.