Review by Choice Review
This compact book is a condensed version of thoughts on aesthetics and the philosophy of art that Roger Scruton has been developing since his doctoral thesis, published as Art and Imagination 35 years ago. Condensed but not dense, this volume is intended to be accessible to the educated reader. It succeeds without compromising the adequate articulation of its complex ideas. Scruton (Institute for the Psychological Sciences) begins with six platitudes to which any account of beauty must conform. He then traces four major kinds of beauty: human beauty as an object of desire; natural beauty as an object of contemplation; everyday beauty as an object of practical reason; and artistic beauty as a form of meaning and object of taste. He ends with a round condemnation of the sterility that has overcome the philosophy of art as a result of its abandonment of the central concept of beauty in favor of definitions of art, and the destruction of aesthetics consequent upon its denial of beauty and preoccupation with kitsch. A thread running through the book twines beauty with morality in a Kantian conception of aesthetic subjects as free and rational agents concerned with transcendence. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers. R. Bonzon Augustana College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
In this short work, Scruton (philosophy, Inst. for the Psychological Sciences; England: An Elegy) uses the writings of Plato and Kant along with specific artistic works to create a philosophical explanation of beauty. According to Scruton, when we say that an object is beautiful, we are making a rational judgment about the object that is based on our contemplation of its appearance. He explains that beauty is not a subjective preference but a universal value, founded on reason and our value system, to which all rational agents should agree. Scruton examines four kinds of beauty-human, natural, everyday, and artistic. He is not concerned with defining the qualities of beauty; he works to show how the experience of beauty is similar to religious experiences in that it allows us to "look with reverence on the world." The book's tone is scholarly, yet it remains highly accessible and offers readers a unique and well-argued approach to the concept of beauty. Recommended for academic and large public libraries.-Scott Duimstra, Capital Area Dist. Lib., Lansing, MI (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Library Journal Review
