Beauty [Kindle Edition]
Roger Scruton (Author)Pricing information not available.
Product Details
- Format: Kindle Edition
- File Size: 1326 KB
- Print Length: 176 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 019955952X
- Publisher: Oxford University Press; 1 edition (May 25, 2009)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
- Language: English
- ASIN: B002R81CPU
Editorial Reviews
Review
Review from previous edition: "As always with Scruton, his prose is exquisite and wonderfully clear, which fact together with the illustrations make his book a thing of beauty itself." --A. C. Grayling, The Art Newspaper 01/01/2010
"Careful and absorbing." --A. C. Grayling, The Art Newspaper 01/01/2010
"This is a fascinating and thought-provoking little book." --A. C. Grayling, The Art Newspaper 01/01/2010
"Roger Scruton has moments of great insight and clarity in this attractively slim volume." --Sebastian Smee, The Observer 22/03/2009
"A fascinating book, which I heartily recommend." --Bryan Wilson, Readers Digest 01/03/2009
"Short, fast paced, and wide ranging." --Michael Tanner, Literary Review 01/03/2009
Product Description
"Beauty can be consoling, disturbing, sacred, profane," writes Roger Scruton. "It can be exhilarating, appealing, inspiring, chilling. It is never viewed with indifference: beauty demands to be noticed; it speaks to us directly like the voice of an intimate friend."
In a book that is itself beautifully written, renowned philosopher Roger Scruton explores this timeless concept, asking what makes an object--either in art, in nature, or the human form--beautiful. This compact volume is filled with insight and Scruton has something interesting and original to say on almost every page. Can there be dangerous beauties, corrupting beauties, and immoral beauties? Perhaps so. The prose of Flaubert, the imagery of Baudelaire, the harmonies of Wagner, Scruton points out, have all been accused of immorality, by those who believe that they paint wickedness in alluring colors. Is it right to say there is more beauty in a classical temple than a concrete office block, more beauty in a Rembrandt than in an Andy Warhol Campbell Soup Can? Can we even say, of certain works of art, that they are too beautiful: that they ravish when they should disturb. But while we may argue about what is or is not beautiful, Scruton insists that beauty is a real and universal value, one anchored in our rational nature, and that the sense of beauty has an indispensable part to play in shaping the human world.
Forthright and thought-provoking, and as accessible as it is stimulating, this fascinating meditation on beauty draws conclusions that some may find controversial, but, as Scruton shows, help us to find greater meaning in the beautiful objects that fill our lives.
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know, June 24, 2009
By Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) -
This review is from: Beauty (Hardcover)
Roger Scruton is a moral philosopher whose work is for many of us a source of reassurance and hope. He stands against the modern and especially post- modern trend which suggest that Truth , Goodness and Beauty are not values, but forms of oppression which must somehow be violently opposed and devalued. In a sense his heart is that of an Enlightentment Rationalist who argues that our Thought and our Art are meant to enhance our understanding of the world, and our appreciation of Life. In seeking in a sense to give us back our sense of how Beauty enriches our life Scruton does a service not only to Aesthetics but to the way we live in our everyday world.
I find his work among the most persuasive and inspiring philosophical writing that is being done today.
"Contra Post-Modernist Sacrilege", May 31, 2009
By Stanley H. Nemeth (Garden Grove, CA United States) -
This review is from: Beauty (Hardcover)
In this brief volume, Roger Scruton persuasively comes to the aid of those of us eager to hear nowadays, say, a Mozart opera or a Shakespearean play but who to do so have to endure the by now conventional shenanigans of Regie directors bent on defaming clearly admirable characters and setting noble works of Western Culture in brothels or other tiresome dens of iniquity. Scruton makes an unanswerable case that such post-modern exemplars are engaging in a predictable, frankly adolescent sort of sacrilege, not so transgressive in fact as just merely and less glamourously repetitive of their own peers' practice. Post-modern "rebellion," reminiscent of teenage behavior, is a rebellion by its numerous advocates marching in embarrassing lockstep. If his book were to be widely read, it would surely influence younger artists to innovate, moving out of the dead-ends of such trite postmodern practice.
Scruton's central thesis is that while Beauty is something that must be individually experienced, nevertheless it is essentially rational and thus connected to Truth and Goodness, rather than being a mere preference one cannot expect other rational selves ever to agree upon. Scruton's knowledge of aesthetics, ranging from Plato and Plotinus down through the centuries to contemporary theorists and artists is undeniably impressive. His is a work to reread and savor.
Beautiful!, October 26, 2009
By Edward Styles (Wilson, NC) - )
This review is from: Beauty (Hardcover)
Few books have fulfilled my expectation as well as Roger Scruton's Beauty. Many decades ago, I entered college intending to become a graphic artist. Going into publishing instead, I became disgusted with art as it succeeded in its efforts to be disgusting. Scruton reconnected me with what I once valued so much - its transcendence. It was a pleasure to read someone who takes art more seriously than most artists do. I strongly recommend this book. -- [...]
