Beauty: A Very Short Introduction
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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 )
Careful and absorbing. (A. C. Grayling, The Art Newspaper )
This is a fascinating and thought-provoking little book. (A. C. Grayling, The Art Newspaper )
Roger Scruton has moments of great insight and clarity in this attractively slim volume. (Sebastian Smee, The Observer )
A fascinating book, which I heartily recommend. (Bryan Wilson, Readers Digest )
Short, fast paced, and wide ranging. (Michael Tanner, Literary Review )
Careful and absorbing. (A. C. Grayling, The Art Newspaper )
This is a fascinating and thought-provoking little book. (A. C. Grayling, The Art Newspaper )
Roger Scruton has moments of great insight and clarity in this attractively slim volume. (Sebastian Smee, The Observer )
A fascinating book, which I heartily recommend. (Bryan Wilson, Readers Digest )
Short, fast paced, and wide ranging. (Michael Tanner, Literary Review )
Product Description
Beauty can be consoling, disturbing, sacred, profane; it can be exhilarating, appealing, inspiring, chilling. It can affect us in an unlimited variety of ways. Yet it is never viewed with indifference. Here, the renowned philosopher Roger Scruton explores the concept of beauty, asking what makes an object - either in art, in nature, or the human form - beautiful, and examining how we can compare differing judgements of beauty when it is evident all around us that our tastes vary so widely. Is there a right judgement to be made about beauty? Is it right to say there is more beauty in a classical temple than a concrete office block, more in a Rembrandt than in last year's Turner Prize winner? Forthright and thought-provoking, and as accessible as it is intellectually rigorous, this introduction to the philosophy of beauty draws conclusions that some may find controversial, but, as Scruton shows, help us to find greater sense of meaning in the beautiful objects that fill our lives.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
26 of 27 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Roger Scruton is one of Britain's leading philosophers, though now based at an American university. He combines, unusually, great erudition with the ability to write in a way that is not merely comprehensible but actually enjoyable. He has been called a "popularist" but I think that is wrong: he is popular because he writes well and thinks of the reader. Aesthetics is a particular concern of Scruton's and this book is up to his own high standards. He deals with, and dismisses, the simple argument that there is no such thing as beauty and that all things are relative, which is the same as saying that nothing is beautiful. If you saw Scruton's television programmes about beauty then you will enjoy this book, though it is not based on the series. The book is pocket-sized but has some 14 illustrations, themselves worth the price of the book. Scruton writes about beauty in the visual arts, painting and sculpture, but also in architecture, film, music and nature as well as what he calls "the aesthetics of everyday life." This is a book on philosophy for those who do not normally read books about philosophy. At a time when so much is nihilistic, here is a book that affirms the beautiful and the sublime. I especially recommend it as a present for young people just going up to university. It is a book to read, re-read, to keep and treasure.
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Small in size, brief in length, but with great density of content, this book is itself a physical realisation of the values it propounds. In many ways it serves as the introduction to aesthetics that I was expecting, and which would have perhaps shallowed the learning curve that I had to negotiate, with his far more demanding The Aesthetics of Music. As ever, the clarity of Scruton's arguments matches the precision and elegance of his prose. The main bulk of the book is a presentation of the broad history of aesthetic ideas arranged according to themes that assess our responses to beauty in nature, everyday life and our fellow beings. This culminates in the discussion of beauty in Art where some hint of the intensification of the vexatiousness and technical difficulties of the attendant issues is given. The final two chapters are social commentary dealing with themes that will be familiar to those who have read other Scruton titles; the proper role of the erotic in Art, and the apparent 'retreat from beauty' that would seem to characterise much of modern life. Along the way new ways of seeing, thinking and feeling about familiar things are suggested to us, and we are assisted in giving explicit rational form to our inchoate intuitions, and perhaps most importantly we are asked to consider how they contribute to a life well lived. Scruton is a rare and marvellous example of a modern philosopher who is determined to tackle those questions that define its most venerable traditions, and which most modern philosophy has abandoned, namely those that pertain to the right way to live. Questions that have no right answer but that must be asked afresh by each new generation, especially in times such as ours of rapid and radical change. As one reads more of his works one starts to sense the emergence of an overriding systemicity to his thought that starts to bind together questions that would seem to be superficially unrelated, the political ramifications of aesthetic value being just one obvious example. In that light it would seem that this little book is as close as we get to a foundation to this system.
I by no means agree with all of Scruton's views. I can't dismiss the sense that some of his ideas are a bit too deeply rooted in privilege for my 'taste'. Nonetheless, there is an undeniable sense of seeing the world with a clear and steady eye, that is informed by the deepest sources of Western history and tradition, that makes so much of modern cultural and social criticism, from both left and right, seem childishly hysterical in comparison. Thus, even when I disagree with Scruton I find myself grateful to him for giving me an intellectual framework within which to think clearly about the issues and their interrelations that he brings to light. My only regret with regards the book is that I cannot discuss some of those issues and seek verbal clarification, particularly in relation to some of the subtler aspects of the chapter on Beauty in Art, from the man himself.
I by no means agree with all of Scruton's views. I can't dismiss the sense that some of his ideas are a bit too deeply rooted in privilege for my 'taste'. Nonetheless, there is an undeniable sense of seeing the world with a clear and steady eye, that is informed by the deepest sources of Western history and tradition, that makes so much of modern cultural and social criticism, from both left and right, seem childishly hysterical in comparison. Thus, even when I disagree with Scruton I find myself grateful to him for giving me an intellectual framework within which to think clearly about the issues and their interrelations that he brings to light. My only regret with regards the book is that I cannot discuss some of those issues and seek verbal clarification, particularly in relation to some of the subtler aspects of the chapter on Beauty in Art, from the man himself.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
A marvellously erudite book full of clear and orderly insights into Beauty. Some of which I have arrived at myself, but never thought through as succinctly. Another wonderful book of beautiful prose and gently convincing augument from Mr Scruton.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Not great.
Scruton's is an old-fashioned, classical, narrow, positivist and elitist view of beauty. If you want a good modern and critical view of the subject read Umberto Eco's book 'On... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Book Buff
R. Scruton's BEAUTY
Roger Scruton, the radically independent thinking English philosopher, has written a masterpiece. While he does take pains to explain in detail concepts which any MFA SHOULD... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Floyd ALsbach
Scruton on Beauty
A Kant-like analysis of aesthetics in visual Art and Music ( perhaps also with roots in F. R. Leavis' approach to literature ? Read more
Published 15 months ago by C. J. Terry
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