The Sense of Beauty (1896) is George Santayana’s classic treatise on aesthetics, developed from his Harvard lectures and his first major book. Santayana defines beauty as ‘pleasure objectified’ and analyzes the sources of aesthetic experience under the headings of material, form, and expression, building a naturalistic account of how and why we find things beautiful.
Elegantly written and influential in American philosophy, the book grounds the appreciation of art in the psychology of pleasure while honoring the dignity of beauty. It remains a foundational text in the philosophy of art. This free EPUB download is cleanly formatted for any e-reader.