Concept of the Beautiful

<P>This book details the history of the concept of the beautiful starting with a distinction between the 'warm' metaphysics of beauty and the 'cold' one modeled on Plato's Janus-faced relationship to beauty and ending with a fragmented yet hopeful vision propagated by the likes of Nietzsche Benjamin and Adorno. The most important intellectual figures to write about beauty in Western metaphysics and in the post-metaphysical age are examined in this book.</P>