Ars Amorata
A philosophy of beauty
Ars Amorata is a philosophy of beauty. It is a way of life. It is not a religion. It is a belief system, similar to the way one might call Stoicism a belief system or a way of life. It is a layer that exists — or does not — below all religion and all social structures. And it belongs to all of you.
Philosophers throughout the ages have argued whether beauty is objective or subjective. In my view it is neither. It is not inherent as a property of the object, and it is not in the eye of the beholder. Beauty is a third thing altogether.
Beauty is prime. It stands alone. It is a thing apart — in Kant's words, a Thing-In-Itself. Beauty emanates from what Aristotle called the Unmoved Mover, what Plotinus called The One, what scientists call the Big Bang, and what John in the New Testament called the Word.
Ars Amorata is an attempt to lift beauty to its rightful place as the primary guiding principle in our hearts and in the world.
Further
The Alabaster Girl The book. Ten years of writing about all of this, and where most men who find their way here begin. The Amorati A certain kind of man, described in 2002. The men who recognised themselves in it took the name. The Story Twenty-five years, and how any of this came to exist at all. Restoring Beauty The art foundation, and a conversation with Sir Roger Scruton that was never finished. Conversations Some hundreds of hours of thinking aloud, in company, about all of it.