Of Beauty and Power

• Authors: Scruton Roger
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Preview: /Roger Scruton interviewed by Mikołaj Sławkowski-Rode/ Beauty and power (here I mean primarily political power) have a relationship with a long and turbulent history perhaps first explicitly acknowledged by Plato. Beauty is often employed in the service of power (national anthems, and emblems are perhaps the most obvious example), but sometimes also serves to undermine it (as the works of the romantic Polish poets in exile did). Likewise power has at times been the protector of beauty (during the reign of the Medici’s for instance) and at others its persecutor (in Soviet Russia for example, where its appreciation was a hallmark of the bourgeois heresy, or currently in the areas controlled by ISIS where in many cases it’s blasphemy). Can beauty be innocent serving any kind of power, or will it be corrupted if the power it serves is? Conversely can legitimate power use beauty without damaging it?

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Warszawski
• Journal: Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture
• Year: 2018
• Volume: 2
• Issue: 1(3)
• Pages: 109-111

Dates

published

2018-04-27

Contributors

author

Scruton Roger

• University of Buckingham
• Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford

Identifiers

DOI

10.26319/3122