The Philosophy of Beauty Part Four

No copyright infringement intended. Video uploaded under fair use act.

This program echoed my thoughts on beauty and society more completely than anything I've watched on TV before. It moved me, and made me feel a little better about the way I feel. Please watch if you're even remotely interested, I think it's a beautiful program.

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Philosopher Roger Scruton presents a provocative essay on the importance of beauty in the arts and in our lives. In the 20th century, Scruton argues, art, architecture and music turned their backs on beauty, making a cult of ugliness and leading us into a spiritual desert. Using the thoughts of philosophers from Plato to Kant, and by talking to artists Michael Craig-Martin and Alexander Stoddart, Scruton analyses where art went wrong and presents his own impassioned case for restoring beauty to its traditional position at the centre of our civilisation.

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[skymeli]

No values in the Enlightenment?! Come again!

[MWLtpt10]

anyone know what piece is playing around min 6:30?

[th3wing3dpaint3r]

@AeacusCanti sounds like something Philip Glass would compose

[AeacusCanti]

Does anyone know the song that begins at 4:20?

[RevengeOfIjapa]

@sybyly It's true but Newton was still deeply religious (unsure about Descartes, but he may have been a deist). Newton was not orthodox in his Christianity, though: he was an Arian. Even in his unpublished works he expressed deep religiosity, even attempting to calculate the year of the Second Coming (upon failing he calculated it would not happen before 2060). Had he been publicly exposed as an Arian, he would have been hung for it. He recorded his beliefs but he didn't publish dangerous ones.

[sybyly]

@RevengeOfIjapa Surely conclusions of God's continued hand in the new models were attempts to keep madness at bay, find an audience and avoid lynch-mobs......like Cartesian doubt leading to the sorry 'proof' of God's existence. The new scientists hoped in vain to wash the divine blood-stains off their hands.

[RevengeOfIjapa]

Scruton forgets that Newton came to the conclusion that the universe is mechanical and deterministic mainly because he held there was a transcendental force or being (ie. God) holding it together and making it so. Scruton is wrong about the Newtonian model being devoid of subjective experience, because the conclusion was based partly on it.

[sned10000]

@somor98 Why would we evolve a sense of beauty?

[buskingmonk]

no purpose whatsoever....moral and spiritual nihilism. This world view is so prevalent

in western society that it is only as we draw back the curtain as in this set of films that we recognise the changes silently realised in the last 50 years. Busking monk plays solo bach on the streets of Europe, exploring beauty, freely giving and talking about life and beauty to whoever stops. open our eyes and soften our hearts!

[somor98]

our sense of beauty is a biological adaptation