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Beauty
- A Very Short Introduction
- Narrated by: Chris MacDonnell
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
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Beauty
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Summary
Beauty can be consoling, disturbing, sacred, profane; it can be exhilarating, appealing, inspiring, chilling. It can affect us in an unlimited variety of ways. Yet it is never viewed with indifference.
In this Very Short Introduction audiobook, the renowned philosopher Roger Scruton explores the concept of beauty, asking what makes an object - either in art, in nature, or the human form - beautiful and examining how we can compare differing judgments of beauty when it is evident all around us that our tastes vary so widely.
Is there a right judgment to be made about beauty? Is it right to say there is more beauty in a classical temple than a concrete office block, more in a Rembrandt than in an Andy Warhol Campbell's Soup Cans?
Forthright and thought-provoking and as accessible as it is intellectually rigorous, this introduction to the philosophy of beauty draws conclusions that some may find controversial but, as Scruton shows, help us to find greater sense of meaning in the beautiful objects that fill our lives.
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What listeners say about Beauty
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- John Adamson
- 23-05-21
Beauty marred
This is one of Scruton’s finest works, and an excellent starting point for anyone wishing to engage with his broader views on art, literature, architecture, philosophy and morality. It is marred, however, by generally poor narration. That Chris MacDonnell’s voice is bland and flat would be bad enough; but Scruton’s text is replete with references to works and phrases in French, German, Italian and Latin - and there is scarcely a foreign word which the hapless and evidently monoglot MacD does not succeed in mispronouncing, often to unintended comic effect.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 29-09-21
Extraordinary Book and Narration.
can't express how much I enjoyed this book. insightful, informed and entirely inspitational.
will get the text version too.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- diana lowe
- 29-01-24
loved it
It really made me think about what is beauty and why we need it in our lives? The narrator was really good too and really brought the issues to life.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- L
- 03-03-24
Book should be called “How Porn can make Sense of Art to People who like Sex”
The expectation was of a neutral summarised introduction to the philosophy of art, but instead this was mostly a discussion of sexual desires and religious influences, the direct opposite of my interests - which is subjective, but also was absolutely not made clear by neither the blurb nor the context of the series. At times I found myself rolling my eyes and feeling irritated at the old fashioned misogynistic interests and arguments only thinly veiled with afterthoughts of counter argumentations that felt more like editorial corrections to get away with the initial arguments, and as a listener, more like gaslighting than a genuinely balanced account. A very frustrating listen filled with weirdly pornographic tendencies and obvious arguments. Why am I listening to an entire chapter on how a page three “model” isn’t considered art? This kind of intellectualised teenage boy thought process was quite irritating to listen to. Sure, it’s a valid argument theoretically, but not one I would have wasted my time with if the contents of the book had been correctly conceptualised in the blurb and the title of the book. I’m quite sorely disappointed in the fact that this is even part of the series at all, which is usually much more reliably neutral and factual instead of wildly deviating and entirely singular, more like an essay with a particular approach and argument, than in any way any sort of “introduction”. If you’re into this sort of thing go ahead but I hated it.
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