2017

WHY
BEAUTY
MATTERS:
A CRITICAL REVIEW
One thing Scruton got very correct
is his title, “Why Beauty Matters”.
Beauty is value perceived and value is
the meaning derived. When one fails to
find meaning in a way of life, art, music,
poetry, process and so on, there is no
beauty and that leads to a repulsion also
known as ugliness. Scruton’s work was
unable to pin his case on why beauty
mattered because, he approached a
subjective theme with an objective
theoretical framework as well as not
clearly defining any of his terms.
Beauty, taste, and art are subjective
terms and will continue to be respective
to the beholder. The work of an artist
should be to ensure that people get a
positive meaning to their creations.

T N WILLIAM
 2017

SYNOPSIS
Renowned British writer and Contemporary philosopher Roger Scruton put forward a provocative and
fascinating documentary on the importance of beauty in art and in our lives. Scruton argued on what
true beauty is and what is not beautiful which is irrespective of its beholder. He believed that beauty is
an objective truth rather than being respective to the eye of the beholder, a classic idea that has mostly
disintegrated from the present art marketplace.

In the 20th century, Scruton argued that art, music, and architecture turned their backs on beauty causing
a “cult of ugliness and leading us into a spiritual dessert”. Utilizing the thoughts of philosophers such
as Plato and Kant; and interviews with Alexander Stoddart and Michael Craig-martin as a theoretical
framework, Scruton analyzed where art went wide of the mark and proposed his own passionate case for
re-establishing beauty to its traditional position at the core of our civilization.

Scruton posed a strong generalization where he stated that anytime between the 1750 and 1930, if
educated people were asked to describe the aim of art, music, or poetry, the reply would have been
“beauty”. Furthermore, he stated that if these people were asked the point of that, it would have been
learnt that beauty was value which is as vital as goodness and truth. Scruton claimed that from the 20th
century, beauty stopped being imperative but focused on disturbing and breaking moral taboos.

Modern works of artists such as Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Franz Kline, and Rothko, sell for huge
sums but have lost their true aesthetic value. Furthermore, Scruton believes that the undervalued pre-20th
century art has much to offer including “beauty, humanity, and care of the soul” as he recognized artists
such as Corot, Tintoretto, Titian, and Rembrandt as the greatest. Scruton proposed that the ultimate goal
of art is to “raise the audience from the animal to the spiritual level”.

Scruton asserts that the deviation from beauty caused prizes to be won based on originality and at
whatever moral cost. Apart from art causing a cult of ugliness, architecture has also become sterile and
soulless; language, music, and manners are increasingly offensive, self-centred, and raucous. Therefore,
Scruton posed that good taste and beauty have no real place in our lives. Scruton explained that the self-
centeredness of all these ugly things is based on the word “ME”; my pleasures, my desires. My profits
and art is left with response than “yeah go for it”. Spiritual values have been exchanged for material ones
in which art is promoted as an investment rather that something to be observed. Scruton concluded that
we are losing beauty and the negative resultant effect will be losing the meaning of life.
 2017

ANALYSIS
According to Delle Donne (2010), beauty does not exist “just like that”; there are factors that make us
perceive things as beautiful. Delle Donne (2010) proposed that physical human beauty can be linked
to evolutionary patterns such as advertence of the primary and secondary sexual organs; or scheme of
childlike characteristics; and other traits such as culture; education; body weight or tanned skin. Delle
Donne (2010) claims that the same occurs with a particular painting; song, or poem in which their
beauty is caused by some elements in the aesthetic object, and in the way of perceiving and processing
of the perceived. Haubrich (1998: 5) posed that beauty is a subject difficult to define, even though it’s an
everyday phenomenon.

Delle Donne (2010) defines beauty as what we like, inspiring, funny, great, interesting, or fascinating to
us. Delle Donne (2010) believed that beautiful things cause pleasure and this pleasure can be more or
less intense and perceived in different ways. Otto (1993: 113) stated that from Aristotle and Plato, to the
early British empiricists aestheticians and on to Schopenhauer, Hegel and Kant, and very recent scholars,
the consideration of pleasure is a central element of aesthetic experience. According to Csikszentmihalyi
(2008) pleasure is perceived as a the so-called “flow” which entailed that perception of time changes
in dealing with an aesthetic object. Delle Donne (2010) proposed that beauty is therefore a pleasurable
feeling that rises in the perception of each individual. It emerges by recognizing patterns, mechanisms and
relations in content. It is not the structures by themselves that constitute the beauty, but the satisfaction of
the human need for certainty, so for order and understanding.

Beauty can therefore be perceived as a subjective term, based on human experiences, and unique to
an individual which creates a sense of value. Scruton presented his argument on an objective note by
attempting to categorize what is beautiful of which his categorizations are based on his experiences
and taste for classical art, music, and architecture. Modern architecture has a great influence from
industrialization and mechanization and this has caused a change in the way everything is created as to
the classical age when it was more of human effort, hence more handy skills were required.
Scruton’s deliberate comparison between these two eras is not a feasible argument because of the
differences in materials, skills, and methods of creating art, music, poetry, or architecture. Scruton
however has a point in the watering down of handy skills of art, music, and architecture. Notwithstanding,
his outright condemnation of most works of contemporary art and architecture is extreme as these works
are associated with the people, beliefs, experiences, and lifestyle of a particular timeline and fit perfectly
in it.

As a child brought up in the modern age, I find pop music and modern architecture to be fascinating as
my experiences and beliefs are tied to it and anytime I view these works they present a memory.
This memory is the value that people get from viewing an art piece. Scruton’s objective generalization
is a mismatch to a broad and subjective theme such as beauty which is subject to the beholder based on
experiences and beliefs. Furthermore, Scruton was unable to distinguishably define what art and beauty
were and this becomes very difficult in ascertaining a yardstick of judging what is artistic and beautiful.
Scruton’s standpoint seems to stand for a classical aesthetic appeal but art as well as beauty are subjective,
making his arguments subjective.
 2017

ANALYSIS
The Oxford Dictionaries (2017a) defined art as:

“The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form
such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or
emotional power”.

Some key words to this definition are the human creative skill, imagination, beauty and emotional power.
According to this definition, this means that any work that falls into this category can be art. Scruton’s
argument to this is that the subjectivisms of these themes, art and beauty, have been taken advantage
of by modern day artists, architects and therefore everything cannot be called art and anyone, an artist.
Therefore, there must be an objective way of describing what beauty is.

This to an extent is correct as there must be a way of judging what is truly artistic or beautiful, but again
it is also dependent on who the beholder is and this will be difficult to come to. However, Scruton omits
the principles to be used in judging good art as an analyst coming from an objective perspective. This
is also absent in his analysis of what beauty is. Scruton mentioned that “there are standards of beauty
which have a firm base in human nature and we need to look for them and build them into our lives”.
Scruton is unable to provide these standards and uses the phrase “we need to find” which makes him
stand on a subjective point rather than an objective one which he proposed. The plurality of standards
that will emerge from everyone will create a wide pool of standards in which it will be difficult to arrive
at a conclusion. Moreover, every work of art is unique and so, generating a standard aimed at judging the
beauty may not suite the context in which the art form was created.

Scruton analyzed modern day art as an art form void of creativity and skill. Scruton’s timeless utilizes
broadly subjective terms and fails to give a clear definition of what he implies. Creativity as defined
by the oxford dictionary (2017b) is ‘the use of imagination or original ideas to create something;
inventiveness’. Modern day art works are creative in a modern approach and have a meaning and Scruton
fails to elaborate on the factors which make them not be creative”.
Like many philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato (Otto, 1993) who viewed beauty from an aesthetic
point of view, Scruton had the same notions. Just as ‘form-follows-function’ was the modern-day
movement, the meaning and the created experiences became the goal rather than the aesthetic appeal as
seen in the works of Duchamp. Michael Craig in his interview stated that the purpose of the modern art is
not just to create an appealing work of an ideal world but to represent the real world in which people live
in which gives more meaning to them.
 2017

CONCLUSION
Beauty is the value perceived from anything be it an object, writing, piece of music, behaviour, process
whether psychological or physiological. Value lies in the meaning derived. Beauty is a broadly subjective
discussion. Scruton’s ‘Why Beauty Matters’ gives a fair attempt on objectively examining the subject and
judging what beauty is and why beauty mattered. Scruton’s work gives a hint of his approach of beauty
being that of an aesthetic appeal. Scruton outlines a key point in which is the watering down of skill
and craftsmanship in art and architecture. However, a huge portion of Scruton’s work is debateable and
unclear.

One thing Scruton got very correct is his title, “Why Beauty Matters”. Beauty is value perceived and
value is the meaning derived. When one fails to find meaning in a way of life, art, music, poetry, process
and so on, there is no beauty and that leads to a repulsion also known as ugliness. Scruton’s work was
unable to pin his case on why beauty mattered because, he approached a subjective theme with an
objective theoretical framework as well as not clearly defining any of his terms. Beauty, taste, and art
are subjective terms and will continue to be respective to the beholder. The work of an artist should be to
ensure that people get a positive meaning to their creations.
 2017

REFERENCES
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2008). ‘Jenseits von Angst und Langeweile: Im Tun aufgehen’. In deutscher
Sprache hrsgg. und mit einer Einfuhrung von Hans Aebli. 10. Aufl. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta

Delle Donne (2010) ‘How Can We Explain Beauty? A Psychological Answer to a Philosophical
Question’. Proceedings of the European Society for Aesthetics, vol. 2. Complutense University of
Madrid

Delle Donne, V. (2010) ‘Die Schonheit der Lyrik psychologisch erkl art’. Unbestimmtheit, Assoziationen
und die Asthetik der Sprache. Diss. Univ. Bamberg.

Documentary Addict (n.d.) ‘Why Beauty Matters’ [online] available at https://documentaryaddict.

com/films/why-beauty-matters [01 March 2017]

Gramophone (2013) ‘Roger Scruton – Why Beauty Matters’ [online] available at https://www.
gramophone.co.uk/forum/general-discussion/roger-scruton-why-beauty- matters [01
wMarch 2017]

Haubrich, J. (1998) ‘Die Begriffe” Schonheit “ und ” Vollkommenheit“ in der Asthetik des 18’.
Jahrhunderts. Diss. Johannes Gutenberg-Universitat Mainz

Otto, Marcus (1993) ’Asthetische Wertschatzung’. Bausteine zu einer Theoriedes Asthetischen. Berlin:
Akademie Verlag

Oxford Dictionaries (2017a) ‘Art1’ [online] available at https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/art

[01 March 2017]

Scruton, R. (2009) ‘Why Beauty Matters’ [online] available at https://www.youtube.com/

watch?v=bHw4MMEnmpc [02 March 2017]