Abstract

The article seeks to function as a cluster of reminders of the rich, robust and subtle place of ‘our’ concept of beauty—hence of its contrasts. It illustrates this through everyday life examples as well as through criticism of writings that, in apparent embarrassment about using the idea, seek to supplant it with something less suspect. The article seeks to show the concept of beauty at work not only in art but, as Plato urged, in human action and reaction at all levels, as well of course in nature. I try to sketch an epistemology of sensibility and a logic of beauty as a more-or-less topic neutral concept attaching to whole, hence individual and perhaps unique situations.