Beauty, Roger Scruton
Beauty, Roger Scruton
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Beauty
A Very Short Introduction

Author: Roger Scruton

Narrator: Chris MacDonnell

Unabridged: 6 hr 11 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 02/26/2019

Synopsis

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. In this Very Short Introduction, 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 judgments of beauty when it is evident all around us that our tastes vary so widely. Is there a right judgment 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 an Andy Warhol Campbell Soup Can? 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.

About Roger Scruton

Roger Scruton is widely seen as one of the greatest conservative thinkers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A polymath who wrote a wide array of fiction, nonfiction, and reviews, he was also the author of over fifty books.

A graduate of Jesus College, Cambridge, Scruton was professor of aesthetics at Birkbeck College, London; university professor at Boston University, and a visiting professor at Oxford University. He was one of the founders of the Salisbury Review, contributed regularly to the Spectator, the Times, and the Daily Telegraph and was for many years wine critic of the New Statesman. Sir Roger Scruton died in January 2020.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Dfordoom on August 30, 2011

Roger Scruton’s little 2009 book Beauty makes some interesting if very unfashionable points. Scruton links beauty with equally unfashionable concepts like truth and goodness, suggest that beauty has a moral dimension, and rejects moral and cultural relativism. He also links beauty with the sacred, n......more

Goodreads review by Jeroen on November 27, 2016

So, how to rate this book? Roger Scruton is a very good writer, and he brings up interesting subjects in this book, for instance the attention to everyday beauty, such as gardens, the way people dress, etc., which is often overlooked in aesthetic discussions. However, he never fails to give me the wi......more

Goodreads review by Douglas on December 09, 2017

Scruton is fabulously well-read in this subject, and there were many worthwhile insights here. But there is no transcendental traction at all.......more

Goodreads review by robin on November 07, 2024

Sir Roger Scruton's Very Short Introduction To Beauty Broad and complex subjects may be approached in many ways. The subject of Roger Scruton's "very short introduction", "Beauty" (2009), for example, might have been written as an overview, presenting various possible definitions of "beauty" followed......more

Goodreads review by Haley on January 11, 2025

What an adventure through so many nooks and crannies! There was a portion towards the beginning regarding judgement of beauty, where he set the stage with some needed caveats and cautions. Taken on its own and detached from the other two transcendentals (goodness and truth), beauty can be rendered in......more

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