Abstract

KONSTAN, David. The Concept of Beauty in the Ancient World and its Reception in the West. Nova tellus [online]. 2012, vol.30, n.1, pp.133-147. ISSN 0185-3058.

The western concept of beauty owes much, needless to say, to the ideas and example of ancient Greece.  Ever since the Renaissance, Greek and Roman art and poetry have been viewed as archetypes of aesthetic perfection.  But did the Greek idea of beauty coincide entirely with our own?  Did they perceive beauty where we do?  In this paper, I argue that there are significant differences between the classical and the modern ideas of beauty, and that the tradition is less continuous and consistent than is commonly supposed.

Keywords : Beauty; art; aesthetics; ϰάλλoς.

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