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On Beauty and Being Just
Have we become beauty-blind? For two decades or more in the humanities, various political arguments have been put forward against beauty: that it distracts us from more important issues; that it is the handmaiden of privilege; and that it masks political interests. In "On Beauty and Being Just" Elaine Scarry not only defends beauty from the political arguments against it b...more
Paperback, 134 pages
Published
October 15th 2001
by Princeton University Press
(first published August 1st 1999)
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I found the basic foundational premise to be flawed. She's essentially attempting to equate beauty with justice. Leaving aside the myriad complexities of subjective/objective distinctions and other philosophical disputes, it seems clear enough on its face that some things that people consider to be ethically justified are not also going to be what they would consider to be beautiful. E.g., winning the war against Hitler, Mussolini and Imperial Japan (something many will call ethically justified...more
Thought-provoking, but rather misguided, I thought. The author's goal is to oppose those in the humanities who see beauty as being unfair by showing that not only is this false, but that it is central to fairness. It is the second part of her argument that, I think, fails, primarily because she gives people (except those who oppose beauty) too much credit. I don't think, as Scarry does, that beauty necessarily makes someone more beautiful, observant, unselfish. I think that people very often app...more
Scarry’s book is an apologia for beauty and in some ways for secular humanism at large. Sometimes her specific arguments fail to convince, and while it can’t be true that beauty necessarily begets justice (as Scarry herself notes, the beautiful exists both before justice and after its removal), the book succeeds in dismantling the arguments against beauty, in part through its own skillful evocation of beauty.
What is most difficult for me to swallow in the book is the leap not from beauty to jus...more
What is most difficult for me to swallow in the book is the leap not from beauty to jus...more
Scarry has many beautiful and insightful moments, but the first part of the essay is stronger than the second, as on the whole it becomes less and less concrete when it needs to be more and more concrete (when talking about beauty's relation to justice).
The logic in general is not very sound. I secretly got mad when 99.9% of her examples were from Western literature and culture and when there was an overemphasis on visually-perceived beauty. That said, I enjoyed her palm tree passages, poetic l...more
The logic in general is not very sound. I secretly got mad when 99.9% of her examples were from Western literature and culture and when there was an overemphasis on visually-perceived beauty. That said, I enjoyed her palm tree passages, poetic l...more
Thought-provoking examination and defense of Beauty (currently frowned on in much of the art world). Scarry proposes that enjoyment of Beauty aids in the formation of a sense of social justice in this deeply felt polemic. Though there are issues she skirts (the lust for possession which beautiful objects can inspire comes to mind), one can only admire her engagement with her subject and the breadth of her arguments.
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I picked up On Beauty and Being Just for free from a friend who was clearing out some old [text]books. I *may* have only read the first two words in the title, and I'm not sure what I was expecting. Some kind of treaty on aesthetics, perhaps?
In any case, I was pleasantly surprised by this argument for beauty. As a humanities major looking for work in my field of study, I feel myself having to justify my existence pretty often. The argument runs along the lines that being involved with beautiful...more
In any case, I was pleasantly surprised by this argument for beauty. As a humanities major looking for work in my field of study, I feel myself having to justify my existence pretty often. The argument runs along the lines that being involved with beautiful...more
To explain my single star rating I will say this book was written quite well, but the thesis simply seemed to come off, to me, as another pithy assertion connecting beauty to truth, setting maxims along the way that I simply couldn't agree with. So, if you tend to be more sympathetic to Greek interpretations in your considerations of beauty, you will probably enjoy the beautiful ideals the author was responding to, but if you are interested in the deluding and distracting nature of beauty, and h...more
I read this for my aesthetics seminar. The first section, "On Beauty and Being Wrong" is quite beautifully written, and is mostly about when one is mistaken about whether something is beautiful (they realize it was beautiful all along, or realize it was never beautiful), using the example of the paintings of Matisse. The second and longer part, "On Beauty and Being Fair", is where she starts to put forth her ideas connecting beauty to justice, and here it falls apart a little bit, unfortunately....more
very enjoyable if you're into the very theoretical. which i am. her sparse use of examples amidst abstraction means that when she has examples or concrete details, they're very powerful.
below is a paragraph i particularly enjoyed:
"Radical decentering might also be called an opiated adjacency. A beautiful thing is not the only thing in the world that can make us feel adjacent; nor is it the only thing in the world tha tbrings a state of acute pleasure. But it appears to be one of the few pheonome...more
below is a paragraph i particularly enjoyed:
"Radical decentering might also be called an opiated adjacency. A beautiful thing is not the only thing in the world that can make us feel adjacent; nor is it the only thing in the world tha tbrings a state of acute pleasure. But it appears to be one of the few pheonome...more
Felt swept away by her language and nuanced thought, but, like many readers, had a hard time, in the end, agreeing with the overall contention that beauty leads to justness. I want to believe, but am rather jaded on the whole beauty = truth equation. Still, I gravitate towards the sincere after reading so much satire and want to make up my own math: sincerity = beauty = a truth I want and need and aspire to, especially in today's world. Also: Scarry's discussion of palm trees and Matisse is dyna...more
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Elaine Scarry is after the connection between beauty and truth and beauty and justice. In doing so she talks of the effects of beauty on the observer. It is spare fare in the end, I fear and, while some might appreciate her writing, it did not captivate me. I prefer talk of the Good, the True and the Beautiful anyway.
The book is a two-part analysis describing different aspects of beauty in western culture. Each part encompasses different ideas associated with beauty like moral, emotional, and perceptual notions that commonly define beauty. The author defines these ideas of beauty and shows how they may link with social justice.
About the sixth time reading this book. I get something new every time, but always come away a little unconvinced about the connection between beauty and justice, though perhaps I could be persuaded that beauty is our most potent rhetorical device to advance a theory of justice based on equality/symmetry.
This book requires so many leaps of faith in order to read it. The assumptions it makes prior to making any points leaves the book slightly unravelled. The larger points made by the book are hard to identify. Lots of circular logic.
It seems like the craze for books on beauty is subsiding somewhat. Scarry's book is elegant, erudite, and inspiring, the later being a word I wouldn't use lightly. I heard her talking about the book compellingly at MOMA.
Sep 30, 2010
Lori
is currently reading it
A definitive argument about how beauty effects our ability to see what is politically and ethically just and even better, fair. The word for beauty and justice in English is the word fair itself.
Elaine Scarry's book on the benefits and pleasures of beauty is beautiful in itself. In saying so however, does not entail that the arguments behind beautys influence in justice are not flawed.
I read this book years ago, but rereading it I found her philosophical argument both more lovable than before, as well as more contentious. If you like pretty, short treatises, read it.
This might deserve more stars but I read it on the subway and was frequently not fully engaged in the book so I didn't comprehend parts of in. Not light reading.
really well written with some lovely references and quotes, but the whole thesis and justifications are far too much of a generalization. I was scratching my head at certain parts of her explanations [not just because of my amateurism I'm sure], due to their disregard for many external factors, such as the problems of the perception of beauty - our modernist society with media attempts to define beauty as an elitist almost non-existent commodity. Obviously beauty, justice, and truth are all very...more
Here I am breaking again my rule not to include the books I read for D--. Scarry is a genius. But, more importantly, she must have one hell of a garden! She made my day. "A beautiful thing is not the only thing in the world that can make us feel adjacent; nor is it the only thing in the world that brings a state of acute pleasure. But it appears to be one of the few phenomena in the world that brings about both simultaneously: it permits us to be adjacent while also permitting us to experience e...more
I wouldn't say that this was the defining book that changed how I see beauty or justice, but it was interesting, and I'm glad I read it. I found some of her concluding arguments to be interesting and compelling, though I'm not sure I'm fully persuaded. Scarry talks about how the balance/symmetry of beauty encourages us to look for social balance and equality. She also talks about how beauty can take us outside of yourselves to see more than our limited perspective of the world and our obsession...more
What in god's name is she talking about? The prose is pretty good though. And the sketches are... nice.
A powerful treatise on the importance of beauty which becomes in itself a beautiful object
really great, though it could do with a bit more grounding. i want to accept everything even though it doesn't feel as if she's proved it.
A small book, arguing for the return of beauty (or discourse about beauty) to the humanities, through its depoliticalization. While Scarry is largely convincing in her phenomenology of beauty and her defense of the gaze against those who would charge it as purely destructive, where perhaps her argument would break down is in her failure to see the history of the aesthetization of specific objects, which often is inseparable from asymmetrical relations of power, injustice, and colonialism, as Rog...more
Great, thought-provoking work.
this brief defense of beauty and its relationship to justice was a pleasurable read. i think it lacks in the theoretically sound department, as some of the conclusions she makes, while having a logical set ups, don't seem to be quite founded. however, the writing was true to its topic and the subject brings up many points for meditation. scarry has a very positive view of human nature which i find refreshing, and it's great to read an academic who values beauty and believes that it has transform...more
I had to go back and change my review, and I'll add more later. I know that a lot of people dear to me have found this book to be helpful and life-giving, but I continue to be very troubled by it.
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“This willingness continually to revise one's own location in order to place oneself in the path of beauty is the basic impulse underlying education. One submits oneself to other minds (teachers) in order to increase the chance that one will be looking in the right direction when a comet makes its sweep through a certain patch of sky.”
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“Beauty brings copies of itself into being.”
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