Beauty. A Very Short Introduction by Roger Scruton is a real revelation. Sir Roger V. Scruton convincingly shows that beauty is not something we can do without. Beauty has a deeper meaning than just being playful bells and whistles. Beauty, he shows, can be encountered in nature and created in art. Beauty is, so to speak, the reverberant sound of the divine creation and an essential endowment of. If it were absent from the world, we wouldn’t feel at home.
Scruton also hints at a disquieting development in art, music, and poetry: the flight from beauty, i.e. the deconstruction of beauty. And he gives appalling examples thereof.
One can only hope that all those involved in the business of art, music and poetry, such as stage directors, conductors, writers, editors, publishers, patrons and alike, read „Beauty,“ because it may enlighten them and prevent them from casting out beauty from the realm of art. The hope is also that all those involved in politics, economics, and so on, read „Beauty,“ in order to sharpen their eyes for nature’s beauty and prevent them from destroying it.
In fact, everyone ought to read the book. It is beautifully written!
