The volume enquires into the relationship between philosophy and aesthetics in Late Antiquity. Is the sensuous beauty of art a medium for the highest thinkable truth? And if this can be called‘aesthetics’ , how has it changed over the centuries and what is its significance for the theory of art today? The contributors– experts in systematic philosophy and literary studies from a variety of disciplines– work on this transdisciplinary topic using concrete examples from the Middle Ages to Post-modernism and examine the scope and transformations of this fundamental insight up to the present day.