This book is required reading for everyone who has a mind. The mind is a powerful tool capable of great creativity and invention. But, when used improperly, the mind can also become an instrument of suffering. Beauty as a State of Being shows the reader how to use the mind well, so that peace can reign in the individual life and, by extension, the life of the world. When the mind finds its proper place the heart is revealed and, with the heart, joy. Beauty as a State of Being guides the reader to realms of joy and spiritual illumination, where answers to the great questions of life are also to be found. As the path presented in this book progresses toward the spiritual, the ideas ascend in conceptual and literary beauty, in essays and prose poems that are themselves revelations of the heart.

This book is required reading for everyone who has a mind. The mind is a powerful tool capable of great creativity and invention. But, when used improperly, the mind can also become an instrument of suffering. Beauty as a State of Being shows the reader how to use the mind well, so that peace can reign in the individual life and, by extension, the life of the world. When the mind finds its proper place the heart is revealed and, with the heart, joy. Beauty as a State of Being guides the reader to realms of joy and spiritual illumination, where answers to the great questions of life are also to be found. As the path presented in this book progresses toward the spiritual, the ideas ascend in conceptual and literary beauty, in essays and prose poems that are themselves revelations of the heart.

Have 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. In On Beauty and Being Just 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 our homes, museums, and classrooms. Scarry 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. With its direct appeal to the senses, beauty stops us, transfixes us, fills us with a "surfeit of aliveness." In so doing, it takes the individual away from the center of his or her self-preoccupation and thus prompts a distribution of attention outward toward others and, ultimately, she contends, toward ethical fairness. Scarry, author of the landmark The Body in Pain 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.

Why is God's beauty often absent from our theology? Rarely do theologians take up the theme of God's beauty—even more rarely do they consider how God's beauty should shape the task of theology itself. But the psalmist says that the heart of the believer's desire is to behold the beauty of the Lord. In The Beauty of the Lord, Jonathan King restores aesthetics as not merely a valid lens for theological reflection, but an essential one. Jesus, our incarnate Redeemer, displays the Triune God's beauty in his actions and person, from creation to final consummation. How can and should theology better reflect this unveiled beauty? The Beauty of the Lord is a renewal of a truly aesthetic theology and a properly theological aesthetics.

In a book that is itself beautifully written, renowned philosopher Roger Scruton explores this timeless concept, asking what makes an object--either in art, in nature, or the human form--beautiful.--From publisher description.

The bestselling classic that redefined our view of the relationship between beauty and female identity. In today's world, women have more power, legal recognition, and professional success than ever before. Alongside the evident progress of the women's movement, however, writer and journalist Naomi Wolf is troubled by a different kind of social control, which, she argues, may prove just as restrictive as the traditional image of homemaker and wife. It's the beauty myth, an obsession with physical perfection that traps the modern woman in an endless spiral of hope, self-consciousness, and self-hatred as she tries to fulfill society's impossible definition of "the flawless beauty."

This book addresses the vital importance of beauty, its sources, and manifestations in everyone's lives-including psychotherapy patients. During psychotherapy, patients manifest or defend against the desire to be beautiful. This book considers definitions of beauty, gender ide...