The Ethics of Beauty

The original task of Ethics as conceived by Socrates was to guide us to the most just and meaningful life possible. Today, ethicists define their discipline more narrowly as "the rational investigation of morality." This reduces Ethics to an examination of the Good by the True, thus tacitly suppressing serious consideration of the Beautiful in the pursuit of the best life. In The Ethics of Beauty, Orthodox Christian theologian Timothy Patitsas first considers Beauty's opposite, the dark events that traumatize victims of war and other ugly circumstances, and then invites us to rediscover the older Beauty-first approach to moral reasoning and the spiritual life. Covering topics ranging from creation to political theory to the Jesus Prayer, including war, the Orthodox approach to psychology, trauma, chastity, healthy shame, gender, marriage, hospitality, art, architecture, economics, urban planning, and both information and complexity theories, The Ethics of Beauty lays out a grand panorama of the Orthodox worldview, in which Beauty, Goodness, and Truth are recognized as indispensable elements of the glorious life in Christ to which we are all called.