This issue of Soundings might be thought of as an extended consideration of the concept famously addressed in John Keats's 1820 Ode on a Grecian Urn and especially the canonical line from its closing stanza, Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty. What is the exact relationship between art, beauty, balance, and truth? Can and should considerations of beauty be used in assessing seemingly nonaesthetic ideas and concepts? What is the nature of the boundaries between art and reality and what is gained through pushing these boundaries to their breaking point? How are works of art and artists shaped by historical and philosophical notions of law, justice, morality? Can beauty and truth, however defined, be reconciled? These questions are unpacked and explored by the contributors in this issue.
To begin, Junxiao Bai's The Spectrum of the Divine Order: Goodness, Beauty, and Harmony interprets the writings and ideas of Ptolemy and Augustine in...
