Overview

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but it's also in the language we use and everywhere in the world around us. In this elegant, witty, and ultimately profound meditation on what is beautiful, Sartwell begins with six words from six different cultures - ancient Greek's 'to kalon', the Japanese idea of 'wabi-sabi', Hebrew's 'yapha', the Navajo concept 'hozho', Sanskrit 'sundara', and our own English-language 'beauty'. Each word becomes a door onto another way of thinking about, and looking at, what is beautiful in the world, and in our lives. The earthy and the exalted, the imperfect and the ideal: things, spaces, high art, sounds, aromas, nothingness. Sartwell writes about handfuls of beautiful things - among them, a Japanese teapot and Diana Rigg as Mrs Emma Peel, the pleasure in a well-used hammer and in pop music and in Vermeer's 'Girl in a Red Hat'. In Sartwell's hands these six names of beauty - and there could be thousands more - are revealed as simple and profound ideas about our world and our selves. 'Crispin Sartwell has written a classic book on experiencing the world aesthetically.; It is rich with real examples and personal knowledge of the way each of the six names of beauty discloses a different mode of beauty's meaning in human life. The book has the clarity and acuity of philosophy at its best, without jargon or dogma or the kind of heaviness that typically weighs down the discussion of what should be marvellous to think about. I enjoyed it greatly, and would recommend it as an antidote to those that believe aesthetics is marginal or minor, and a treat for those who realize that beauty is what gives value to life at its best.' - - Arthur C.

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9781280158186

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