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Beauty (Essay 8 Of Seeing: When Art And Faith Intersect), Douglas G. Campbell

Faculty Publications-- Department of Art and Design

Excerpt: "Beauty as a concept has given twentieth century writers, especially art critics and art historians, a great deal of difficulty. Why is this so?Answering would take several volumes--! will settle for less.

The traditional idea of beauty has all the trappings of a universal concept. For Plato, one of the earliest and most prominent supporters of such universals, beauty, along with other concepts, had the mind of the creator as its source. For much of Christianity's existence Plato's idea of beauty was accepted--with some alterations. For one, the creator became Yahweh, creator of the universe. Secondly, though spiritual beauty …