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Roger Scruton, Beauty. A Very Short Introduction - Konspekt PDF
Roger Scruton, Beauty. A Very Short Introduction - Konspekt PDF
PREFACE:
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the features from which the soul of another shines on us, and
make itself known. (p. 41)
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- The judgment of beauty is not just an optional addiction to the
repertoire of human judgments, but the unavoidable
consequence of taking life seriously, and becoming truly
conscious of our affairs. (p. 69)
- And it really matters which kind of art you adhere to, which
you include in your treasury of symbols and allusions, which
you carry around in your heart. Good taste is as important in
aesthetics as it is in humour, and indeed taste is what it is all
about. (p. 84)
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CHAPTER SEVEN, ART AND EROS
- As Plato and Kant both saw, therefore, the feeling for beauty is
proximate to the religious frame of mind, arising from a
humble sense of living with imperfections, while aspiring towards
the highest unity with the transcendental. (p. 146)
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loveless culture, which is afraid of beauty because it is
disturbed by love. (p. 148)
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other in savage fantasies. Both are forms of falsehood, ways of
reducing and demeaning our humanity. Both involve a retreat
from the higher life, and a rejection of its principal sign,
which is beauty. But both point to the real difficulty, in modern
conditions, of leading a life in which beauty has a central
place. (p. 160)
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
- Art, nature and the human form all invite us to place this
experience in the centre of our lives. If we do so, then it offers a
place of refreshment of which we will never tire. But to
imagine that we can do this, and still be free to see beauty as
nothing more than a subjective preference or a source of
transcient pleasure, is to misunderstand the depth to which
reason and value penetrate our lives. It is to fail to see that, for a
free being, there is right feeling, right experience and right
enjoyment just as much as right action. The judgment of
beauty orders the emotions and desires of those who make it.
It may express their pleasure and their taste: but it is pleasure in
what they value and taste for their true ideals. (p. 164)