ABSTRACT
Such an answer is all very well as far as it goes. Beauty is indeed by definition preferable to ugliness, and morality is by definition a set of principles to guide conduct that is incumbent upon us. But in neither case does the answer get us very far; it certainly does not get us where we want to go. Once it is acknowledged, for example, that beauty is intrinsically good, we are faced with some rather more important and difficult questions: what is beauty or what are the defining characteristics of beauty? What things are beautiful? To what extent should the beautiful be pursued at the expense of other things?
