Meredith Petrin, Boston Review Full of striking observations about beauty in and beyond the arts. And she very skillfully defies traditional political criticisms of beauty. Tom D'Evelyn, The Providence Sunday Journal Scarry makes a fascinating case that seeing beauty reminds us of our own marginality, and therefore our equalness to other people. And dare I say, this little book, taken to heart, will do the same. Beauty makes us better, more honest, more judicious, more humble, nicer people. Stuart Hampshire, The New York Review of Books This short book could change your life. her short book light and allusive and gentle and unpolemical style. Nina Ayoub, Chronicle of Higher Education Scarry persuades that there is an analogy between the recognition of beautyand the recognition of just or fair social arrangements.does not preach and. That mental state is so pleasurable 'that ever afterwards one is willing to labor, struggle, wrestle with the world to locate enduring sources of conviction-to locate what is true.' The heightened perception that comes with beauty's life-affirming capacity to awaken us to our world is part of what alerts us to injustice, she writes.

'The beautiful, almost without any effort of our own, acquaints us with the mental event of conviction,' she says. Beauty's link with truth requires no belief in an immortal realm. That replication is not only in art, for example, but also in perception, as in the desire to continue beholding as long as possible. Colin McGinn, The Wall Street Journal She begins her defense of aesthetic pleasure with musings on the nature of beauty. Her book is a bracing antidote to the glum puritanism of many opponents of beauty, and it makes some insightful observations about how beauty figures in our perceptual, emotional and moral lives. Scarry's writing is evocative and lively.

Scarry on beauty and being just