On Beauty History of Western Ideas - Umberto Eco  ## Metadata - Author: **Umberto Eco** - Full Title: On Beauty History of Western Ideas - Category: #articles ## Highlights - A beautiful thing is something that would make us happy if it were ours, but remains beautiful even if it belongs to someone else ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jtf9spc4zm4bfjmdhbw90pay)) - The Greeks also had a latent mistrust of poetry, which was to become explicit with Plato: art and poetry (and consequently Beauty) may gladden the eye or the mind, but they are not directly connected to truth. Nor is it an accident that the theme of Beauty is so frequently associated with the Trojan War. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jtfa0ynfr9cwy2vnzk62xp9d)) - Serene harmony, understood as order and measure, is expressed in a Beauty that Nietzsche called Apollonian Beauty. But this Beauty was at the same time a screen that attempted to conceal the presence of a disquieting, Dionysiac Beauty, which was not expressed in apparent forms, but over and above appearances.This was a joyous and dangerous Beauty, antithetical to reason and often depicted as possession and madness: it is the nocturnal side of the mild Attic sky, populated by initiation mysteries and obscure sacrificial rites, like the Eleusinian Mysteries and Dionysiac rites.This disturbing nocturnal Beauty was to remain concealed until the modern age (cf. Chapter XIII), only to emerge as the secret and vital reservoir of contemporary expressions of Beauty, thus revenging itself on the beautiful harmony of the Classical world. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jtfaa2r0qygftacrw9n8epz8)) -  ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jtfaaqx4a5224rm099knqbfp)) -  ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jthsyjfb9tawz21cephpzvgq))