Aesthetics has typically been regarded as an arena where claims about truth cannot be made as questions about art seem to involve more matters of taste than knowledge. In Real Beauty, however, Eddy Zemach maintains that beauty, ugliness, gracefulness, gaudiness, and similar aesthetic properties are real features of public things and argues that whether these features are present is a matter of fact that can be empirically investigated.

By examining the opposing nonrealistic views of Subjectivism, Noncognitivism, and Relativism, Zemach attempts to show how antirealistic...