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.