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There is a deep problem with beauty. Beauty is commonly equated with sexual attractiveness. Yet there is also the beauty of art, which arouses an aesthetic response of disinterested contemplation.

As Roger Scruton writes in his recent book, Beauty (2009): "In the realm of art beauty is an object of contemplation, not desire."

Are there, then, two kinds of beauty? By looking back the classical Greek conception of beauty, we may see how it gave rise to the modern dilemma, and some possible ways of resolving it.

David Konstan is Professor of Classics at New York University and Professor Emeritus of Classics and Comparative Literature at Brown University.Professor Konstan's research focuses on ancient Greek and Latin literature, and on classical and Hellenistic philosophy. In recent years, he has investigated the emotions and value concepts of classical Greece in Rome. Among his books are Roman Comedy (1983), Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres (1994), Greek Comedy and Ideology (1995), Friendship in the Classical World (1977), Pity Transformed (2001), The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks (2006), "A Life Worthy of the Gods": The Materialist Pyschology of Epicurus (2008), and Before Forgiveness: The Origins of a Moral Idea (2010). He is currently working on a book on ancient conceptions of beauty, and also a study of remorse and repentance in classical and early Jewish and Christian thought.

Professor Konstan is a visiting 2013 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Professor-at-Large.

This lecture is presented by the Institute of Advanced Studies at UWA and the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions .

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Michael Sinclair-Jones +61 8 6488 3229 / +61 400 700 783
Paula Phillips +61 8 9842 0810