In 2001, Elaine Scarry, the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and General Theory of Value at Harvard University, published On Beauty and Being Just, in which she challenges the political arguments commonly put forward against beauty: “that it distracts us from more important issues; that it is the handmaiden of privilege; and that it masks political interests.”
To the contrary, she argues that beauty presses us toward justice, by making fairness, an abstract concept, concrete and by carrying us away from our self-absorption.
Scarry summarizes her argument is this video from Harvard’s Think Big 2 series in 2011.
From arcCA DIGEST Season 10, “Other Beauty.”
