{"title":"Elaine Scarry","description":"\u003cp\u003eElaine Scarry’s work explores the intricate relationships between beauty, justice, and the human experience. Her writing invites readers to reflect on how aesthetic perception intersects with ethical thought, offering profound insights into philosophy and psychology.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eExpect thoughtful and eloquent examinations of abstract concepts that challenge conventional perspectives. Scarry's books provide a rich, intellectual journey for those interested in the deeper questions of fairness, art, and the nature of human understanding.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"on-beauty-and-being-just-by-elaine-scarry-9780691089591","title":"On Beauty and Being Just","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHave we become beauty-blind? For two decades or more in the humanities, various political arguments have been put forward against beauty: that it distracts us from more important issues; that it is the handmaiden of privilege; and that it masks political interests.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eOn Beauty and Being Just\u003c\/em\u003e, Elaine Scarry not only defends beauty from the political arguments against it but also argues that beauty does indeed press us toward a greater concern for justice. Taking inspiration from writers and thinkers as diverse as Homer, Plato, Marcel Proust, Simone Weil, and Iris Murdoch, as well as her own experiences, Scarry offers up an elegant, passionate manifesto for the revival of beauty in our intellectual work as well as in our homes, museums, and classrooms.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eScarry argues that our responses to beauty are perceptual events of profound significance for the individual and for society. Presenting us with a rare and exceptional opportunity to witness fairness, beauty assists us in our attention to justice. The beautiful object renders fairness, an abstract concept, concrete by making it directly available to our sensory perceptions.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWith its direct appeal to the senses, beauty stops us, transfixes us, and fills us with a \"surfeit of aliveness.\" In so doing, it takes the individual away from the centre of his or her self-preoccupation and thus prompts a distribution of attention outward toward others and, ultimately, she contends, toward ethical fairness.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eScarry, author of the landmark \u003cem\u003eThe Body in Pain\u003c\/em\u003e and one of our bravest and most creative thinkers, offers us here philosophical critique written with clarity and conviction as well as a passionate plea that we change the way we think about beauty.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"NewSouth Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47455665422572,"sku":"9780691089591","price":47.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/710CtE26BKL._SL1500.jpg?v=1774790784"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.co.nz\/collections\/elaine-scarry.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}