Elaine Scarry in her little volume titled On Beauty and Being Just argues that beauty “is a compact . . . between the beautiful being (a person or thing) and the perceiver.” This compact is an act of freedom and love, the gift of one to the other without condition. Within this compact, within this milieu of beauty, fairness and justice may come to be. “Beauty seems to place requirements on us for attending to the aliveness” of others, Scarry continues.
