On Beauty and Being Just.

Rating:
Summary: As with a Seurat painting ...
Review: ... the great pleasure of this book comes from absorbing its overall effect rather than its component points. Scarry's specific arguments can be incomplete at crucial moments, but the author scatters sparkles that do not stop glittering when one puts the book down. Her enchanting enthusiasm for beauty of all kinds is (to use a less than beautiful word) infectious. The central argument of the book -- that beauty spurs the reproduction and perpetuation of itself -- is mirrored in the way "On Beauty and Being Just" helps the reader see the world through Scarry's rose-colored eyes.

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Summary: Issues we need to revisit in the millenium
Review: As an artist and Christian (Catholic) I've been challenged to work for justice and not occupy myself with such trivial pastimes as painting. This book provides me answers while putting into words my own reactions to beauty. I've also not been in the presence of Elaine Scarry's intellect and breadth of vision and expression in some time. Well worth reading.

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Summary: Why Beauty goes deeper than you may like to think
Review: Elaine Scarry presents a beautiful, thought-provoking and in the end, not altogether convincing (but still convincing nonetheless) that beauty is connected to justice, and shouldn't be tossed out of academic circles in the name of political correctedness.

Scarry approaches the subject of beauty and the nature of beauty by first telling the world where people go wrong when it comes to aesthetics. She gets personal, yes, but she remains philosophically on the mark as long as the reader is willing to stay focussed on the central point of her entire book. Beauty is not some silly thing we humans should discard and treat as unimportant or not valuable. On the contrary, beauty is something that tells us much about ourselves and the world in which we live in so it cannot be ignored any longer! Kudos to Scarry for bringing it back into the discussion limelight.

However, having said this, my only problem philosophically with the book was the way Scarry attempted to tell readers how the idea of justice is something ingrained within human beings and found consciously in human nature yet, the idea of beauty is not. She is not equating the two as the same, yes, but she is equating the two as being interdependent and so it seemed peculiar to me that she would make such a strong case for the root of justice and act as though beauty is some autonomous thing out there by itself. A sense of justice and a sense to experience and see and seek out beauty are both things we humans possess. It's in our nature and I wish Scarry would've made that a little more clearer to the readers. If she would've done that, her argument would've been so much stronger.

Let the aesthetic discussion thrive on!

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, but without philosophic rigor
Review: I found this book a charming re-introduction to the question of beauty in contemporary discussions involving aesthetics. Unfortunately, Scarry fails to add the logical rigor necessary to make her point, and instead continually invokes a multitude of voices that cry for recognition. Like an earlier reviewer, I feel very sympathetic to the aims of this book. I, too, feel as though literary theory in the past few years has somewhat robbed us of questions of beauty within the field of legitimate study. She reminds me of the first reaction I had to poststructuralist literary analysis in my literary theory class. NO! Beauty cannot be destroyed by structural analysis, because... because...it just CAN'T! While I admit Scarry gives us a bit more of a reason to reconsider beauty as a legitimate concern, I don't think her reasons are THAT compelling, at least from a logical and philosophical viewpoint.

Her descriptions of beauty are some of the most beautiful I've ever encountered and made me WANT desperately to consider her arguements for Beauty as logically sufficient. However we, as students of theory and aesthetics, must remain loyal to the truth, even when that truth looks ugly and meaningless to us. It seems that the road towards beauty is longer than Scarry percieves it to be.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, but without philosophic rigor
Review: I found this book a charming re-introduction to the question of beauty in contemporary discussions involving aesthetics. Unfortunately, Scarry fails to add the logical rigor necessary to make her point, and instead continually invokes a multitude of voices that cry for recognition. Like an earlier reviewer, I feel very sympathetic to the aims of this book. I, too, feel as though literary theory in the past few years has somewhat robbed us of questions of beauty within the field of legitimate study. She reminds me of the first reaction I had to poststructuralist literary analysis in my literary theory class. NO! Beauty cannot be destroyed by structural analysis, because... because...it just CAN'T! While I admit Scarry gives us a bit more of a reason to reconsider beauty as a legitimate concern, I don't think her reasons are THAT compelling, at least from a logical and philosophical viewpoint.

Her descriptions of beauty are some of the most beautiful I've ever encountered and made me WANT desperately to consider her arguements for Beauty as logically sufficient. However we, as students of theory and aesthetics, must remain loyal to the truth, even when that truth looks ugly and meaningless to us. It seems that the road towards beauty is longer than Scarry percieves it to be.

Rating:
Summary: My Kind of Problem
Review: I have had intellectual pin up girl problems before, so it is a pleasure for me to take a look in this book periodically, as I have for several weeks now. The tone and pacing here are much different, if your normal point of view is the kind of thriller pace achieved by Joyce Carol Oates in her story in the January 2001 Playboy, for example, where the reader has to race to the end to discover how Babs is taking all this, if that is still possible. This book is more like a picture as it actually develops: two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and definitely a space between the two ears where there is a danger that all her favorite laws may end up being Rendquisted (and twisted, or did I say that?) when she has to face how likely it is that anyone will be just. There is some consideration of gazing, staring, and generally annoying behavior, and this book ought to be good for people who are that kind of gluttons for punishment.

Rating:
Summary: review of reviews
Review: My stars are just a guess, but I feel compelled to comment on the snitty quality of many of these reviews, and note the fact that those who are most generous toward this book are themselves creative writers.

It says something about the state of humanistic learning that such a book needs writing. Having taught literature for a number of years and had some interest in theory, I was still not ever smitten by the anti-beauty virus that seems to have caught on. Thinkers like Arendt, Heidegger, Gadamer and Wittgenstein invite us to think about beauty and move me in ways that the likes of Derrida (who will probably be consigned to some sort of dustbin and justifiably reviled for having infected literary study) can't. So I look forward to reading this text, even if, based on the excerpts, it seems an echo of thinkers like Kant on beauty. It strikes me that Scarry may be praised for reviving conversation about the aesthetic instead of regarding it as merely a figleaf covering a hidden agenda. One tires of the hermeneutics of suspicion which these days is mistaken for critical reading.

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Summary: A lovely and intriguing book
Review: The reviewer below clearly has a problem with Scarry: after all, enough scathing articles have certainly been written about Peter Singer. The reviewer equally clearly has a problem with the English language, since Scarry's tiny book -- 8 oz., 5" by 7 1/2" -- is by no stretch of the imagination a "tome." Now, stretching the imagination is what "On Beauty" is all about -- how beauty can, among other things, inspire us to creation. Connect-the-dots logicians, quite naturally, will not approve, but they can't see the point for the dots. One may agree or disagree with Scarry's thesis, but wholesale dismissal of the kind below simply smacks of bad faith. Fitting that a book about beauty should so clearly expose the ugliest in its detractors.

Rating:
Summary: Not a very vigourously thought-out book, but a charmer
Review: This is an unremarkable attempt to capture the essence and importance of beauty. It's fine to make this attempt, but the book says nothing that anyone will remember. Trying to define beauty is possible, but you have to be Kierkegaard or Kant to do it. You have to be religious at least, and probably Lutheran. Only Lutherans have the weird blend of faith and dynamic reason that can make such an attempt bear fruit. This book is like a peach thrown at the sunset.

Rating:
Summary: I'm sympathetic, but this is not great
Review: You know it when you see it--but if you don't see it, you don't get it. Reactions to this book, like attitudes about its subject, tend to polarize according to right- and left-brained modes of perception. Either you like this very much, or you regard it as fluffy nonsense. I share the former view. Many aestheticians and critics are non-artists, who evidence little empathy with the motivation of artists. Elaine Scarry is an artist. It may take one to know one. Other artists will will get it--striking sharply with that visceral shock of recognition.