Each year the notable sages of the 21st-century gather to ruminate on, and decide, one of the greatest conundrums of our time: who should win ‘Best Picture’ at the Academy Awards? Too silly of a question for you, the matchless metaphysician? Perhaps you should ponder the other consequential inquiry of the day — who is the best, and worst, dressed on the red carpet?

All sarcasm aside, these questions really are akin to the fundamental questions that philosophers, theologians, and people on the streets have been wrestling with for ages. Indeed, the question “what is true, good, and beautiful?” (the trio often called “the transcendentals”) is serious, important, and multifaceted. Philosophers from the Bhagavad Gita, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Nietzche, and Balthasar have all mulled over this question, to differing results.