Philosophical aspects of modern cosmology

This paper is a short introduction to a special issue on philosophy of cosmology, published in the May 2014 issue of Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics. I briefly introduce the philosophy of cosmology, and then provide a short outline of the contents of the papers in the special issue. The contributors are George Ellis, Dominico Giulini, Marc Lachi\`eze-Rey, Helge Kragh, Jeremy Butterfield, Jean-Christophe Hamilton, Mart\'in L\'opez-Corredoira, Brigitte Falkenburg, Robert Brandenberger and Chris Smeenk. I conclude with a few remarks on the relationship between aesthetics and cosmology.