From the Publisher. A collection of pivotal ideas about beauty from throughout history, with an introduction and critical headnotes.

This collection of writings on beauty includes selections from 20 key philosophers and theoreticians spanning two millennia: Plato, Aristotle, Vitruvius , Alberti, Kant, Burke, Fiedler, Nietzsche, Wilde, Bergson, Bell, Scott, Benjamin, Bataille, Sontag, Jameson, Scarry, Nehamas, Zangwill, and Freedberg and Gallese.

With an introduction and critical headnotes explaining the importance of each text, Mark Foster Gage offers a framework for a provocative history of ideas about beauty as they relate to contemporary thinking on architecture and design. In a world increasingly defined by sumptuous visuality, the concepts of beauty and visual sensation are not mere intellectual exercises but standards that define the very nature of design practice across disciplines and that are essential to the emerging worlds of design and architecture in the 21st century.

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