Krása

From a book by a well-known proponent of conservatism with the laconic title Beauty, originally published by Oxford University Press as part of a series of "short introductions", we would probably expect a search for an answer to the question of what beauty actually is. But Roger Scruton does no such thing (for good reasons). Instead, in his essays devoted successively to human, natural, everyday and artistic beauty, he articulates the experience of encountering beauty in a very accessible way. This very procedure expresses the author's conviction that the experience of beauty is continuous: the appreciation of the "minimal beauty" of a set table is not inherently different from the contemplation of great works of art or natural scenery. Yet Scruton's central idea is (almost provocatively) traditional: although beauty is not a feature of reality itself, and in that sense is not objective, it is nonetheless a universal value grounded in our rational nature. Here, the author does not deny his Kantian inspiration when he links the contemplation of beauty to a disinterested interest that springs from mere reason. Beautiful things and beings, according to Scruton, are those that we view as individual, for their own sake, and in the form in which they make themselves present to us. But how can the experience of beauty be at once disinterested and involve - in line with Scruton's thesis of the continuity of beauty - not only the contemplation of works of art, but also an interest in the beauty of everyday things (which are often also purposeful) and an equally focused attention to the beauty of people? What attitude, after all, is more interested than precisely the desire for a beautiful human being? The search for answers to these questions, which evoke the legacy of Platonism, forms the main line of the book's reflections.

Czech edition.