TOW #7 – IRB: “On Beauty and Being Just” (Part 2)

On Beauty and Being Just

By Elaine Scarry

Princeton University Press 1999

 Elaine Scarry was formerly the Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, but she is now the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University, and has written numerous books and essays on philosophy.  Last time, I introduced Elaine Scarry’s essay, On Beauty and Being Just, which seeks to refute the political and scientific views of 1999 that beauty is irrelevant or even harmful to academic discussion, and, in addition, argue that beauty makes people more concerned about justice.  In the second half of her book, Scarry makes allusion to effectively support the statement that beauty is analogous to justice, then uses logical reasoning to make the argument that beauty does lead to justice. 

The author starts off by quoting a distinguished philosopher to establish her credibility and support her statement that justice is beauty, as seen by their shared characteristic of symmetry.  In Augustine’s sixth book De Musica, he writes, “Beautiful things please by proportion… equality is not found only in sounds… but also in visible forms, in which hitherto equality has been identified with beauty” (98).  Scarry then alludes to the Declaration of Independence and how its just lines, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” are beautiful (102), as an example of beautiful justice that the general public knows well and strives to carry out.  Scarry picks apart the phrase, pointing out the sequence of single- and double-syllable words that makes the phrase beautiful.  Scarry argues that people strive to uphold the justice expressed in this phrase because they want to replicate the beauty of this sentence.

Although Scarry does make an argument that beauty leads to justice (in the second half, not in the first), she does not support this half of the argument as strongly.  The basic structure of Scarry’s argument is that people strive for beauty (explained in first half), and since justice is beauty (explained in second half), people strive for justice (logical reasoning).  While the first half of her book was highly intriguing, as she frames the idea of beauty in an entitrely new light, the second half was spent on trying to relate beauty to justice that essentially relied on the audience to connect the dots.  Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading Elaine Scarry’s philosophy on beauty in On Beauty and Being Just and am excited to further expand the variety of books that I read.

TOW #6 – Article: “An Engineering Theory of the Volkswagen Scandal”

The New Yorker
"An Engineering Theory of the Volkswagen Scandal"

By Paul Kedrosky

October 16, 2015

In response to the September 2015 Volkswagen emissions scandal (aka Dieselgate), Paul Kedrosky, a venture investor and former equity analyst, analyzes how Volkswagen could have kept this a secret and who may have been behind this scandal.  He uses rhetorical questions and the strategies of comparison/contrast and cause/effect, in order to refute the widely held belief that Dieselgate is another corporate scandal driven by greed.

Kedrosky criticizes Michael Horn’s accusation that Volkswagen’s software engineers were to blame using rhetorical questions, thus causing his audience to ponder the accuracy of Horn’s accusation.  The author asks, “A couple of rogue engineers…? Sure, rogue financiers get caught up in scandals, but rogue engineers? And rogue German engineers…?” (para. 3).  His rhetorical questions effectively draw in readers with humor and sarcasm by stereotyping engineers and Germans, while also establishing the controversy about to be debated in his essay.  Although stereotypes are not objective evidence, these rhetorical questions create doubt in readers’ minds through the logical reasoning that engineers, especially punctilious German engineers, would not intentionally break the rules, especially in secret from their superiors.

Kedrosky builds onto his argument with more objective evidence when he reasons that since an automobile’s software consists of a hundred million lines of code, engineers would have trouble spotting the “defeat” device’s code.  To put such a statistic in a more understandable fashion for the general public, the author compares this to a form of travel that would seem even more technologically demanding: a space shuttle.  However, Kedrosky states the programming for a car requires “about two hundred and fifty hundred times the number of lines in the Space Shuttle” (para. 4).  With this comparison, the author helps readers understand the extent of how complex a car’s coding is to convince the general public that it is highly plausible that engineers missed new lines of code with each software update; as a result, over time, these mistakes may have evolved into the “defeat device” that subverted the rules.

The author also anticipates the counter-argument that some people would have noticed and should have spoken up, coming up with two causes explaining why Volkswagen employees would not.  Kedrosky states, “software changes the nature of our relationship to things, making rules feel malleable and more arbitrary” (para. 9), which is one reason why employees may not have felt they were committing illegal activities.  He gives an example that many people could relate to: stealing music.  Stealing CDs is obviously theft, but downloading MP3s does not (para. 9).  The second reason was a matter of Volkswagen pride, as the company had been failing to pass American emission tests, so writing such a code as the “defeat device” was justified in their minds. 

By drawing in readers and creating doubt in their minds using rhetorical questions, Kedrosky is then able to logically reason that software engineers could easily have missed the coding of the “defeat device,” as well as anticipate counter-arguments by analyzing the causes of why Volkswagen employees may not have spoken up if they did discover corrupt software, successfully making the argument that Dieselgate was most likely done with good intentions, but unfortunately resulted in catastrophic events that has ruined Volkswagen’s reputation.  

TOW #5 – Article: "A Shifting Approach to Saving Endangered Species"

The New York Times
"A Shifting Approach to Saving Endangered Species"

October 5, 2015
By Erica Goode

Erica Goode is the environmental editor for The New York Times, where she writes articles on national and international environmental issues.  She established the new environment department in 2009 at the Times.  In response to the Obama administration’s recent exclusion of the greater sage grouse from the endangered species list, Goode wrote this article explaining the scientific and ethical controversies surrounding America’s approach to saving endangered species.  She successfully defines the causes that have effected today’s controversy between groups of people in order to persuade conservationists that there is still hope for a solution, and that the first step towards compromise is to simply talk about the problem at hand and to combine contradicting ideas.  

The author structures her essay with headings, one being, “A Tradition of Distrust” (para. 20) of industry, which Goode argues is the ultimate source of the divisions between conservationists themselves and non-conservationists, who consist of private landowners and industries.  She then cites several supporting examples, including advocators for the spotted owl not trusting the timber industry to follow regulations (para. 30), as well as the inconsistent amounts of funding Congress allocates for each endangered species, since those that serve an industrial purpose receive more money (para. 25).  As a result, some conservationists believe more regulations and supervision should be instigated, while others take the side of having no human interference at all. 

Goode then explains the long-term effects of these divisions by quoting credible scientists and wildlife experts, including the director of the energy, environment, and land use program at Vanderbilt Law School, Professor Ruhl.  He states that “In the future… humans will take up more and more… leaving less for other species.  And society will ultimately have to set priorities and make difficult decisions” (para. 43).  By including his quote, Goode logically argues that making difficult decisions is inevitable.  Instead of tip-toeing around the issue, Goode then quotes the director of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont, Taylor Ricketts, who says, “I don’t see why it’s a problem to talk… the big mistake has been to frame this as a choice” (para. 54), which is how the author calls on her audience, conservationists, non-conservationists, and government officials, to see the issue of endangered species as unavoidable and to welcome and debate controversial ideas in order to compromise on a plausible solution.

TOW #4 – IRB: "On Beauty and Being Just" (Part 1)

On Beauty and Being Just

By Elaine Scarry

Princeton University Press 1999

 As an essayist and English Professor at The University of Pennsylvania, Elaine Scarry has written several books.  Her most well-known books include Dreaming by the Book (1957), The Body in Pain (1985), and Rule of Law, Misrule of Men (2010).  Her essay, On Beauty and Being Just, was published in 1999 by the Princeton University Press in response to the political and scientific views that beauty was irrelevant or even harmful to academic discussion.  Scarry assesses the two main anti-beauty sentiments: (1) beauty distracts from the more important social issues (2) the beauty of an object makes people enjoy it in such a way that damages the beautiful object.  Through the rhetorical strategy of definition by allusions and imagery, Scarry writes to the general public to change its views on beauty and successfully redefines beauty; however, these rhetorical devices fail to support her argument that beauty makes people more concerned about justice.

The author redefines the perception of beauty by alluding to well-known works of art: “It may be startling to speak of the Divine Comedy or the Mona Lisa as ‘a replication’” (Scarry 10).  She then goes on to explain that beauty prompts onlookers into action: to copy such beauty and translate it into other forms.  In doing so, onlookers will search for the originating source of the beauty they see and eventually reach “something that has no precedent… the immortal,” which is the realm where “truth abides,” and how beauty will ultimately lead people to strive for justice.  Scarry’s train of thought jumps from topic to topic, only slightly relating each idea, which does not make for strong supporting evidence for her argument. 

Scarry also conveys the magnitude of beauty’s effects on humans using imagery and personification.  She uses several examples of Henri Matisse’s works to emphasize the increasing prevalence of the beautiful palm trees in Matisse’s paintings, to the point that a palm tree eventually takes up over half of the surface of his 1948 painting.  Scarry writes, “It feathers across the eye, excites it, incites in it saccadic leaps and midair twirls” (Scarry 35).  This imagery displays the idea that beauty will inspire onlookers into action: to look for truth and justice.  Later on, Scarry also ties in the aspects of beautiful symmetry and fairness, the “perfect cube” and justice (Scarry 95) in order to relate beauty and being just.  Once again, the author takes ideas and fails to successfully connect her disjointed ideas into a firm conclusion.  

So far, I find it disappointing that Scarry has been unable to convince me of a relationship between beauty and justice, which interested me because they seem like entirely unrelated ideas.  However, I am enjoying her novel ideas about the concept of beauty that is different from how I have ever seen beauty before.