Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed
Educating for the Virtues in the Twenty-First Century
The True, the Good, and the Beautiful are as timeless a trio of concepts as Western culture has to offer. Since before Socrates, humankind has explored these virtues in an attempt to describe and categorize them. But our definitions of these concepts have unceasingly changed over the ages. Every known civilization has developed its own interpretations of them, and so has confronted difficult questions: Is truthfulness inherent or inculcated? Is beauty achieved or a gift from the gods? Is goodness a birthright or determined by society? In Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed, Howard Gardner explores the meaning of these virtues in a contemporary world of vast technological change and relativistic understandings of human nature. The concepts of truth, beauty, and the good may change, but they are—and will remain—cornerstones of our society.
