One of the first insights of the western tradition is that the “truth appears,” it has a form. In consequence, beauty, classically defined as “form and splendor,” must lie somewhere near the heart of reality. In our time together, we shall explore some of the classical claims about being and beauty, as well as the relation of form-as-ontological to form-as-aesthetic, to see what our tradition has actually said about these matters and to consider where they might lead us by implication.