On Beauty and Being Just - Softcover

Scarry, Elaine

3.64

1,463 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0715631349 ISBN 13: 9780715631348

Publisher: Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd, 2001

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In the past two decades 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 challenges such theories, taking inspiration from writers, painters and thinkers as diverse as Homer, Plato, Matisse, Proust, Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch. She not only offers a passionate defence of beauty from the political arguments against it but also argues that beauty does indeed have a positive effect on life. Rather than serving the privileged it presses all of us towards a greater concern for justice.

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Review:

'A lucid, passionate and cultivated book' -- The Tablet

'With exemplary clarity, Elaine Scarry argues that admiring the beautiful is nothing to be ashamed of ...' -- J. M. Coetzee

From the Back Cover:

"With exemplary clarity, Elaine Scarry argues that admiring the beautiful is nothing to be ashamed of; that on the contrary beauty fosters the spirit of justice. A brave and timely book."--J.M.Coetzee

"Here is a writer almost magically summoning up the world through words and ideas, in a new way, and so guiding the reader, lovingly, to receive the treasures and accept the pleasures of this book as naturally as breathing. Here is a book so measured in words and yet so exciting in ideas, a book that explains the world, even as it is explaining itself. This writer, Elaine Scarry, always leading us to consider justice, has given us a book that is beautiful and inspiring to such a degree that after truly reading it, the reader cannot help but be changed."--Jamaica Kincaid

"Among a restorer's solvents, imagine one so marvelous that what it repaired, what it returned to sparkling freshness, was not some beautiful object, but our damaged perception of Beauty itself. Elaine Scarry's imagination works just this wonder: potent enough to dissolve our every grimy resentment, yet so delicate that in Beauty's renewed radiance we discern, long invisible, the subtle outline of an ethics."--D. A. Miller, Columbia University

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