Forgot your password?  
Related Topics

On Beauty and Being Just Chapter Summary & Analysis - On Beauty and Being Wrong Summary

This Study Guide consists of approximately 16 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of On Beauty and Being Just.
This section contains 782 words
(approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page)
Purchase our On Beauty and Being Just Study Guide

On Beauty and Being Wrong Summary and Analysis

On Beauty and Being Just is a philosophical argument leading to the conclusion that beauty produces equality and social good. More generally, it is a defense of beauty (both in objects and in people) written in the mid-1990s, when beauty was disavowed as an important quality in the humanities, which focused on different theoretical approaches like feminism, Marxism, and post-colonialism.

Scarry begins her argument by discussing Wittgenstein, who argues that beauty requires replication; she gives the example of Leonardo Da Vinci, who copied the works of Verrocio. As a visual event, she writes, art is replicated first by touch and then by vision. In the section entitled "Beauty Prompts a Copy of Itself," she refers to Plato, who discussed the desire to replicate beauty as leading to children, and analyzes a sonnet by Danto to Beatrice that mentions "unceasing begetting." In this way, Scarry writes,...
(read more)

This section contains 782 words
(approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page)
Purchase our On Beauty and Being Just Study Guide
Copyrights
On Beauty and Being Just from BookRags and Gale's For Students Series. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.
Follow Us on Facebook