Tuesday, January 07, 2014

Objectivity in Judgements of Beauty?

Bust of Roger Scruton
A Thing of Beauty?

Since I am so busy teaching an intensive writing course, I'll just quote a short passage on beauty by Roger Scruton for my readers to contemplate:
In the last analysis there is as much objectivity in our judgements of beauty as there is in our judgements of virtue and vice. Beauty is therefore as firmly rooted in the scheme of things as goodness. It speaks to us, as virtue speaks to us, of human fulfillment: not of things that we want, but of things that we ought to want, because human nature requires them. (Roger Scruton, Beauty, page 145)
As firmly rooted as judgements of virtue? Those are firmly rooted? So speaks Scruton. Justification waits upon more reading . . .

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2 Comments:

At 1:44 AM, Blogger Carter Kaplan said...

Here your criticism of Scruton seems to be coming from an analytic direction.

 
At 7:57 AM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

Not so much a criticism as a challenge, i.e., "Show me!" One doesn't need analytic philosophy to do that.

Analytic philosophy, anyway, has its own problems -- as I note in a comment under "Can Pornography be Art?"

Jeffery Hodges

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