- Paperback: 144 pages
- Publisher: Princeton University Press; New Ed edition (15 Oct 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0691089590
- ISBN-13: 978-0691089591
- Product Dimensions: 18.7 x 11.5 x 1.2 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 684,333 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Alexander Nehamas, London Review of Books
On Beauty and Being Just describes, evokes and manifests the loving attention that beautiful objects provoke. . . . [It] is fresh, eccentric and uncompromising.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Ms. Scarry's writing is evocative and lively. . . . Her book is a bracing antidote to the glum puritanism of many opponents of beauty, and it makes some insightful observations about how beauty figures in our perceptual, emotional and moral lives. -- Colin McGinn, The Wall Street Journal
She begins her defense of aesthetic pleasure with musings on the nature of beauty. Beauty begets, she argues. It constantly provokes copies of itself. That replication is not only in art, for example, but also in perception, as in the desire to continue beholding as long as possible. Beauty's link with truth requires no belief in an immortal realm. 'The beautiful, almost without any effort of our own, acquaints us with the mental event of conviction,' she says. That mental state is so pleasurable 'that ever afterwards one is willing to labor, struggle, wrestle with the world to locate enduring sources of conviction-to locate what is true.' The heightened perception that comes with beauty's life-affirming capacity to awaken us to our world is part of what alerts us to injustice, she writes. -- Nina Ayoub, Chronicle of Higher Education
Scarry persuades that there is an analogy between the recognition of beautyand the recognition of just or fair social arrangements . . . . [She]. . .does not preach and . . . her short book [is] light and allusive and gentle and unpolemical [in] style. . . . -- Stuart Hampshire, The New York Review of Books
This short book could change your life. . . . Beauty makes us better, more honest, more judicious, more humble, nicer people. And dare I say, this little book, taken to heart, will do the same. -- Tom D'Evelyn, The Providence Sunday Journal
Scarry makes a fascinating case that seeing beauty reminds us of our own marginality, and therefore our equalness to other people. And she very skillfully defies traditional political criticisms of beauty. -- Meredith Petrin, Boston Review
Full of striking observations about beauty in and beyond the arts. -- Kenneth Baker, San Francisco Chronicle
In the tradition of 19th-century aesthetics, On Beauty and Being Just describes, evokes and manifests the loving attention that beautiful objects provoke. . . . [It] is fresh, eccentric and uncompromising. -- Alexander Nehamas, London Review of Books
Any sophisticated reader not mummified beneath protective layers of irony will find this book not only pleasant to hold in the hand, but valuable to hold in the mind. -- Paul J. Johnson, Religious Studies Review
She begins her defense of aesthetic pleasure with musings on the nature of beauty. Beauty begets, she argues. It constantly provokes copies of itself. That replication is not only in art, for example, but also in perception, as in the desire to continue beholding as long as possible. Beauty's link with truth requires no belief in an immortal realm. 'The beautiful, almost without any effort of our own, acquaints us with the mental event of conviction,' she says. That mental state is so pleasurable 'that ever afterwards one is willing to labor, struggle, wrestle with the world to locate enduring sources of conviction-to locate what is true.' The heightened perception that comes with beauty's life-affirming capacity to awaken us to our world is part of what alerts us to injustice, she writes. -- Nina Ayoub, Chronicle of Higher Education
Scarry persuades that there is an analogy between the recognition of beautyand the recognition of just or fair social arrangements . . . . [She]. . .does not preach and . . . her short book [is] light and allusive and gentle and unpolemical [in] style. . . . -- Stuart Hampshire, The New York Review of Books
This short book could change your life. . . . Beauty makes us better, more honest, more judicious, more humble, nicer people. And dare I say, this little book, taken to heart, will do the same. -- Tom D'Evelyn, The Providence Sunday Journal
Scarry makes a fascinating case that seeing beauty reminds us of our own marginality, and therefore our equalness to other people. And she very skillfully defies traditional political criticisms of beauty. -- Meredith Petrin, Boston Review
Full of striking observations about beauty in and beyond the arts. -- Kenneth Baker, San Francisco Chronicle
In the tradition of 19th-century aesthetics, On Beauty and Being Just describes, evokes and manifests the loving attention that beautiful objects provoke. . . . [It] is fresh, eccentric and uncompromising. -- Alexander Nehamas, London Review of Books
Any sophisticated reader not mummified beneath protective layers of irony will find this book not only pleasant to hold in the hand, but valuable to hold in the mind. -- Paul J. Johnson, Religious Studies Review
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
WHAT IS THE felt experience of cognition at the moment one stands in the presence of a beautiful boy or flower or bird? Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
WHAT IS THE felt experience of cognition at the moment one stands in the presence of a beautiful boy or flower or bird? Read the first page
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Concordance
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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21 reviews
26 of 30 people found the following review helpful
A Proposition Mysterious and Brave
23 April 2006
Format:Paperback
Though it's easy to critique Elaine Scarry's logic and the completeness of her argument, that would miss this book's true importance. As a matter of fact, what's important about On Beauty is that it stood in the face of 20 years of literary and aesthetic criticism, a howling wind into which Scarry makes a simple claim: that the appreciation of beauty presses us toward justice and not away from it. In its simplicity, Scarry's proposition is as brilliant and unprovable now as it was then. But propositions are not the truth; they stake a claim to right action, and Scarry's courageous stand has liberated artists and writers to pursue right action as it resonates with what their eyes and ears hold to be a good and true beyond logic. Scarry uses arguments and descriptions from fellow travellers as various as Homer, Simone Weil. and John Rawls. It's a tour de force ending with a vision of the trireme as the birthplace of athenian democratic values. The logic that connects that vision to the political possibiities immanent in the visual world are as profound and mysterious as any attempt to defend beauty could ever be. Somehow, Scarry manages exactly what she claims for beauty: pressing us toward the good without suspending our desire for all things pleasurable.
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Why Beauty goes deeper than you may like to think
8 Feb 2005
Format:Paperback
Elaine Scarry presents a beautiful, thought-provoking and in the end, not altogether convincing (but still convincing nonetheless) that beauty is connected to justice, and shouldn't be tossed out of academic circles in the name of political correctedness.
Scarry approaches the subject of beauty and the nature of beauty by first telling the world where people go wrong when it comes to aesthetics. She gets personal, yes, but she remains philosophically on the mark as long as the reader is willing to stay focussed on the central point of her entire book. Beauty is not some silly thing we humans should discard and treat as unimportant or not valuable. On the contrary, beauty is something that tells us much about ourselves and the world in which we live in so it cannot be ignored any longer! Kudos to Scarry for bringing it back into the discussion limelight.
However, having said this, my only problem philosophically with the book was the way Scarry attempted to tell readers how the idea of justice is something ingrained within human beings and found consciously in human nature yet, the idea of beauty is not. She is not equating the two as the same, yes, but she is equating the two as being interdependent and so it seemed peculiar to me that she would make such a strong case for the root of justice and act as though beauty is some autonomous thing out there by itself. A sense of justice and a sense to experience and see and seek out beauty are both things we humans possess. It's in our nature and I wish Scarry would've made that a little more clearer to the readers. If she would've done that, her argument would've been so much stronger.
Let the aesthetic discussion thrive on!
Scarry approaches the subject of beauty and the nature of beauty by first telling the world where people go wrong when it comes to aesthetics. She gets personal, yes, but she remains philosophically on the mark as long as the reader is willing to stay focussed on the central point of her entire book. Beauty is not some silly thing we humans should discard and treat as unimportant or not valuable. On the contrary, beauty is something that tells us much about ourselves and the world in which we live in so it cannot be ignored any longer! Kudos to Scarry for bringing it back into the discussion limelight.
However, having said this, my only problem philosophically with the book was the way Scarry attempted to tell readers how the idea of justice is something ingrained within human beings and found consciously in human nature yet, the idea of beauty is not. She is not equating the two as the same, yes, but she is equating the two as being interdependent and so it seemed peculiar to me that she would make such a strong case for the root of justice and act as though beauty is some autonomous thing out there by itself. A sense of justice and a sense to experience and see and seek out beauty are both things we humans possess. It's in our nature and I wish Scarry would've made that a little more clearer to the readers. If she would've done that, her argument would've been so much stronger.
Let the aesthetic discussion thrive on!
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful
As with a Seurat painting ...
28 Jan 2003
Format:Hardcover
... the great pleasure of this book comes from absorbing its overall effect rather than its component points. Scarry's specific arguments can be incomplete at crucial moments, but the author scatters sparkles that do not stop glittering when one puts the book down. Her enchanting enthusiasm for beauty of all kinds is (to use a less than beautiful word) infectious. The central argument of the book -- that beauty spurs the reproduction and perpetuation of itself -- is mirrored in the way "On Beauty and Being Just" helps the reader see the world through Scarry's rose-colored eyes.
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