Beauty in the Light of the Redemption

Beauty in the Light of the Redemption collects in a small, pocket-sized book, three of Dietrich von Hildebrand's most important and accessible essays beauty, art, and truth.  He writes: "What importance is to be attributed to beauty in the life of a Christian? What role should it play in the life of those who have been redeemed? What is the relationship between redemption and beauty? Did beauty lose its significance after the redemption?” Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889-1977), born in Florence, was the son of renowned German sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand. A leading student of the philosophers Edmund Husserl and Max Scheler, he took up the “great questions” – about truth, freedom, conscience, community, love, beauty – with a freshness that allowed him to break new ground, especially in ethics, but also in epistemology, social philosophy, and aesthetics. His conversion to Catholicism in 1914 was the decisive turning point of his life and the impetus for important religious works. His oppos