Beauty and Desecration - Roger Scruton - Power of Beauty Conference

Roger Scruton, world-renowned philosopher, writer, and public commentator, delivered the keynote address of the Power of Beauty conference, entitled “Beauty and Desecration."

[@renzo6490]

During times of scarcity and hardship, beauty is embraced. During times of plenty and excess, we play with oddness and ugliness . Films about opulence and high living came out during the Depression. The Back To The Land movement and the “Hippy” affectation of poverty flourished in the wealthy post war 60’s and 70’s. When we are doing well, we seem to feel safe enough to flirt with degradation.

[@duncescotus2342]

Yes! In the Thirties, it was all Fred Astaire in gloves, wasn't it. Well not all, but know what I mean.

[@LS-td3no]

@Renzo. Very true. Forgot about that pendulum swing we go through in our society.

[@matsdehli]

Brilliant! I think you are right

[@gardeniainbloom812]

Eloquently put but I wonder if it is more banal than that. We get bored and seek balance. Light and dark. Beauty and ugliness.

[@renzo6490]

@@gardeniainbloom812 I'll have to give that some thought.

[@thomasmcewen5493]

Here in communist/atheist Czech God was banned, it was noticed that he took his attributes with him. One of these attributes was beauty. Everything the atheist state was ugly, you couldn't state why but it was ugly. We became sick for lack of beauty. Thank God their project failed.

[@antoniolima1068]

Thomas McEwen lack of idealization, there needs to be a fine balance between what we know and we don't know for life to be interesting.

[@sanniepstein1007]

Yes, the contrast between historic Prague--so beautiful!--and the communist monstrosities is shocking.

[@kayem3824]

Thomas McEwen Actually the "ugly" things you refer to have become very fashionable now as "Brutalist".

[@openmusic3904]

Same issue with England. It used to be one of the most beautiful and architecturally striking countries in the world, now it is one of the most hideous, with daunting grey tower blocks imposing on the sky. An absolute travesty what the post-war architects did to Britain.

[@bogthing1]

Thank God indeed.

[@serpentines6356]

For years I have been talking to people about beauty...Esp. The lack of it in the U.S. when building housing developments...How hideous they are!...I didn't know about Scruton until a few months ago. I was thrilled when I saw he talked about beauty. I just do not understand why so many people care less about beauty.

[@foundmypebbles3874]

Loraine Mohar I presume the appreciation of beauty is innate but it takes a while for their spirits to readjust, as with formerly incarcerated animals that are reintroduced to nature it takes them a little while to shake themselves free

[@TMPreRaff]

Beauty - and god - are man made. And since god doesn't exist, it's up to man to create beauty.

[@renzo6490]

Serpentine S .....esthetics are abandoned when they interfere with profits.

[@LS-td3no]

@@renzo6490 Yes, unfortunately. I remember hearing a story of someone who interviewed architectural students before they entered school and talked to them about their ideas. After their schooling he interviewed them again, and it seemed their creative ideas were zapped out of them. Very sad. I ran into a young man who is going to study architecture. I encouraged him to look up Scruton, and watch his "Why Beauty Matters."

[@LS-td3no]

@@TMPreRaff And where did our value, our love of beauty come from? If we are only an evolutionary, biological mass, then where does love, beauty all our higher dreams, creativity, culture come from? Why aspire to anything other than survival? You do not know for sure God doesn't exist.

[@charlespeterson3798]

I put tape on pause after listening to the Schubert and went over and played my guitar for an hour. It changed my playing more than anything that has happened to me in the last 6 months.

[@Sameoldfitup]

“Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?”― Tennessee Williams,

[@New-Moderate]

I contend that a number of modern artists have contempt for beauty because they know they don’t have the talent to create it.

[@Blissblizzard]

The fox and the grapes.

[@GeoffreyScott571]

It’s actually worse than that. Many modern artists are true masters, but they prefer to create ugliness because they hate beauty.

[@dasglasperlenspiel10]

One of Professor Scruton's best lectures, I think. Very thought-provoking and worthwhile.

[@catinthehat906]

When he makes the point aesthetically about his tie at 40:00 I wonder if he knew in advance that it would match almost perfectly with the curtain backdrop?

[@user-yp2mw2ko9k]

Na, wir hätten doch gerne mal so einen kleinen thought gelesen, den er bei dir provoked hat....🙄

[@MarkReedreber]

Please get us access to the images he's referencing out of the frame of this video!

[@merlingeikie]

just mouse on over

[@misselder1]

@@merlingeikie They’re not on the film at all is what he means. The camera stays on Scruton throughout.

[@twiceismygladnessandrest1877]

Yes pleaseeeee 🥺

[@iga27]

pity the illustrations were missing

[@evangelosgeronicolas2385]

It is easy to find them on pinterest.

[@vitrevi1]

Completely agree, altought the lecture is awsome

[@biaedwards4025]

Beautiful hair...beautiful mind!

[@lauracaruso2524]

Epic hair! Lol.

[@steveb2145]

a breath of fresh air

[@happytheleaf948]

RIP Roger few listen, though the many 'herd'....

[@robinhansen8105]

Where can you see the images?

[@misselder1]

Can some bright person list the works of art here for us to look up? Thanks.

[@queenanne5917]

Putting up the works as he discusses them would have been a good addition, rather annoying searching them up.

[@PuerinTheHunter]

Thank you!

[@carladifranco5051]

Scruton: I love you as much as beauty.

[@die_schlechtere_Milch]

I absolutely agree with him about Bouguereau!

[@merlingeikie]

Thank you

[@NGrimthrie]

Brilliant

[@kipling1957]

It’s so easy to fade things like PowerPoint in and out of video footage why on earth would anyone neglect to do so in a talk such as this?

[@carols4013]

My comment exactly!

[@Shevock]

Every note of Mahler is true. It may just be a true some listeners don't fully appreciate.

[@voodooshizzle]

He looks like the love child of Robert Redford and John Hurt.

[@dalmatinka9084]

Haha! Very true!

[@acommon1]

Enjoyed it

[@fritula6200]

The more man moves away from God, the deeper he reach for ugliness, in everything. Beauty will save the world.

[@Thewonderingminds]

Without one's own self realization at hand, sense of godliness remains hearsay.

[@sanniepstein1007]

Yes, Bouguereau is sappy, but the details are wonderful. Those toes!

[@ManuLeMayan]

Would 've been nice to see the 'artwork'.

[@sanniepstein1007]

While 'artists' are displaying beds they did not build, and pursuing the trite goal of shocking the fuddy-duddies, the truly creative people are working wonders in science and technology. Artists should be embarrassed. Yet-- The Southwest of the US is a realm of true art, full of art that pays tribute to natural wonder, explores native and western tradition, exhibits high craftsmanship, and offers realms of silence and beauty. The artists themselves are left, properly, in the background. All is not lost.

[@kayem3824]

Sanni Epstein Hellywood?

[@serpentines6356]

Hollywood is a very small area...Try looking at a map, and expanding your brain

[@sanniepstein4835]

​@@kayem3824l was thinking of New Mexico.

[@saptarshibhattacharya1448]

Sir rest assured and disturbed, that tie and jacket suits each other and you. Thank you planting a seed of "perception of beauty" in me and making me nervous.

[@kanchanghosh2423]

Excellent.

[@alexcarcamo1053]

i like his hair as well as his mind

[@Br1an.J]

I really like how he rarely uses contractions. Hallmarks of austerity and self respect, traits so uncommon now I am sure no one thinks about it at all.

[@Boomset]

Would love to provide event management services at next year's event. Connect with us!

[@enchantingamerica2100]

beauty for the win

[@josephbrothers4511]

would've been nice to see the screen?

[@michelecrowe1568]

❤😊

[@stephensharp3033]

Why is his top button not done up?

[@DoctorIontach]

www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47285/delight-in-disorder

[@New-Moderate]

It’s kind of a “unkempt chic” look.

[@NeofolkClassics]

rip my man

[@sennewam]

God Bless

[@Sameoldfitup]

"But the wicked are like the tossing sea, For it cannot be quiet, And its waters toss up refuse and mud." So Isaiah is a little dirty too, with all that refuse and mud, in addition to the wickedness."

[@dixonpinfold2582]

I can't quite agree with him on consensus as he describes it around the 1 hr-5 min. mark. Perhaps he's only summing it up as briefly as possible, but I don't think an intellectual would care to do much injustice to his own views for the sake of concision. I do agree there's a strong element of consensus in morality, at least a wish for it which amounts to a wish for harmony. But this wish can't be too insistent or it verges on one for unanimity. Between consensus and the chaos he alludes to there's a territory of disagreement and disharmony, even battle and rancour (not to say violence), that's not a very happy one, but one which can be salutary in a way in which chaos never can. I'll allow that the ridgeline between moral absolutism and moral relativism can only be a rather fine one, but we must always be sure it's at least wide enough to walk on and never a mere razor. The way he phrases it could be the grounds for an awful conformity or repression of dissent, in my view. The same words in an authoritarian's mouth would sound sinister, close to a command or threat. A Party official in China or the president of an American university might even put them to use explaining why freedom is dangerous and destructive.

[@thitherword]

I disagree only with the ideas that all art needs to be healing and that a painting has to say something. Can't a Bouguereau just be incredibly technically accomplished art that extols the beauty of the human form?

[@akiwi177]

Yes, but it doesn't have a soul sadly... If it s only technical, then it is also very superficial on the symbolic and meaning level. A bit like what you see on instagram these days.. (of course on the painting level I mean ;-))

[@eh3345]

Well, what about modesty-where is it in Bouguereau nudes? We can admire the human form without nudity, just go look in the mirror behind closed doors. LOL

[@eh3345]

He had great skill, but painted inappropriately as far as the nudity goes. His other works (with clothing on) were much nicer to look at, and one actually appreciates the human depicted even more, as they are being respected.

[@adriatik7070]

There is a lot of ugliness in modern world arts

[@New-Moderate]

@DOOMSLAYER The only qualification the artist had was the willingness to promote ugly and bizarre art to disturb the observer. This stuff doesn’t just happen. There is a large contingent of art dealers and museum curators that want to desecrate beauty and deny you the sense of awe.

[@Desertduleler_88]

Lol, I was thinking it was some relation of Robert Redford.......

[@WarholsCrystalBall]

The Purpose of Art Schools Today 15:33

[@NothingHumanisAlientoMe]

But the only things worthy of desecration are beautiful... Ah, to be human and hungry...

[@Blissblizzard]

That's rage.

[@NothingHumanisAlientoMe]

@@Blissblizzard Aren't we all in a desperate rage to acquire that calm place?

[@Blissblizzard]

@@NothingHumanisAlientoMe Okay, the temporal and material aspects, The Bamiyan Buddhas were unique, and are gone forever. (I'm not Buddhist btw) The rage to control and to reduce everything to pointy uncomfortable rubble is an unquenchable thirst. Tantrums don't bring peace they bring an unassuaged deep anguish, exhaustion and fragmentation. The 1st humans were fascinated by repeatable motifs and geometric shapes, Not much found in the buzzing, hyper -adaptive, chaos/complexity of nature. We moderns are dispirited by the ubiquity of boxy shapes and straight lines, and there is probably nothing to more uniquely depressing than wind blown grit, dirty concrete walls and strewn discarded detritus. Order and disorder without nature. Beauty and sublimity bring peace.

[@lauracaruso2524]

He looked a little bit like Robert Redford.

[@danielj2653]

Good lecture, but I think he hasn't fully understood the parable of the prodigal son.

[@annalisavajda252]

Well beauty with people often gets condemned as vanity in a way that say a beautiful flower or animal does not. You post a picture of some garden online it won't offend people so much as the Victorias Secret Fashion Show but someone likely landscaped the garden watered the flowers etc. just as the models were prepped and organized esthetically also but their human so degrade them as too tall too thin too young "unrealistic" why is that?

[@Blissblizzard]

Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself.

[@franzitaduz]

Miss you sir, but if you were here, they would cancel you.

[@rickiandavis]

his speaking slowed somewhat, then, he died

[@teresaloureiro2525]

YOU HAVE SPOKEN ABOUT THE ' WITCH HUNT CULTURE ' .

[@teresaloureiro2525]

THEY IVENT . and BELIEVE in MASKS .

[@bobsbigboy_]

beauty can also be filth and confrontational things

[@Blissblizzard]

That's attention seeking.

[@user-yp2mw2ko9k]

What`s the difference between barbarians and tourists? Barbarians only destroy, but tourists desecrate everything.

[@jamesfagan7823]

I can't wait for his lecture on how to assemble a cardboard box in a dark room with one hand tied behind your back, did you ever hear such shit in your life

[@Blissblizzard]

Not since your comment.

[@rickiandavis]

awful camera "work"

[@josephlancaster7997]

Did not the Nazis attack modern art for being 'decadent' ? Political Reaction.

[@New-Moderate]

It doesn’t take a Nazi to indict modern art as decadent.

[@Blissblizzard]

It was decadent, mostly However, (George Grosz was necessary satire and John Heartfelt was effective propaganda) and Nazi Art was anodyne and sickly sentimental and pompous. Its not goodies and baddies time.

[@dukerbower2228]

First seconds: Who questions whether beauty matters? Who says nothing is of any value if it has no use? It is a slog to go any further. He likes beautiful things, ok, so does everyone. How, it appears, "we" can "justify to others what exactly it is we want them to do" seems his core, the scary core of so many who like him. I don't think he is a great thinker at all, very sophomoric.

[@happytheleaf948]

Have you read any of his work...

[@grekerbeer948]

We do not Notice those sorts of things, like how instrumental and materialists we have become. He points it out very well and brings our attention to it.

[@Blissblizzard]

Not everyone likes beautiful things, many preferr exaggerated distorted things, the enraged and bitter wallow in ugliness and broken things etc

[@paulwary]

I can't understand brutalist architechture. Doesn't even work well functionally, et alone aesthetically.

[@TMPreRaff]

All the years deeply studying the concept of beauty, and he still can't do something about his hair.

[@Blissblizzard]

Beauty and vanity and superficiality of commentary - each and all, very different categories.

[@bonsummers2657]

Rogers attire style here is hideous.

[@boobsmalloy]

I love old Scruton

[@markradionov3428]

I do agree with the importance of beauty but very much dislike the connection Mr Scruton makes of it with religion/God.

[@cravis123]

Because it is possible that you do not understand that true beauty is conected to divine nature.

[@dalmatinka9084]

Then you do not understand his point. Like he says, you want the means, but not the end. The point of beauty is that it transcends us, transcends us above our animal self to something greater. That is what philosophers, like Plato, have said for centuries The only thing greater than us can be the Divine. That’s why Religions exist, that man can be transcended through the Divine. Beauty and art is a means which helps us.

[@johnstewart7025]

When people say God, I think "most precious jewel" -- in other words the knowledge that makes life worth living.

[@simonaivancic528]

but all lovely abd beutiful comes from God.... all other comes from the devil and his diabolical demons and people who are neutral or just plain chooses uglynes , evil, etc..

[@michaele.2583]

Very appealing - what a pitty, that Scruton is one of those, who want to make their own prudery a general public norm - absolutly disqualifying!

[@tonyforeman9502]

But why should people make their own prurience a general public norm? Why should that not disqualify? What you call prudery, and others might describe as decency or common sense, is in better for the happiness of society. So much of the vaunted sexual revolution has brought misery in its train.

[@michaele.2583]

Tony Foreman Im sorry for you if anybody should realy have made you unhappy by making his prurience a norm or obligation for you, and I would never advocate it of affirm it, but can you affirm, that it realy happend? I doubt it, but if so, it was surly not me, nor would I be so arrogant to claim to know or even decide (without knowing) what is better for the happiness of others, as you, nor would I be so naive to make happiness the basic foundation for a general norm, but how did Nietzsche so rightously say: "Der Mensch strebt nicht nach Glück, das tun nur die Engländer" - but this is not the philosophy of a true moral, which can only be guided by the right of free choice of the individual, this is the "philosophy" of pc and social-justice workes - as I said: absolutly disqualifying! P.S.: On the day the alleged social norm of prurience becomes only half as repressive and general as the tyrany of christian pseudo-moral I might change my opinion and think it over again, but Im pretty sure this idea is quite remote and far-fetched, but havent we seen an elephant jump on a chair at the sight of a mouse yet? Yes. we have!)

[@tonyforeman9502]

I disagree. A tyranny of prudery would be a bad thing and I do not advocate it. I don't think Roger Scruton advocates it either. The laws (or general public norms) that existed before the sexual revolution, and which were more prudish, were I believe better than the newer prurient ones that reflect the free choices of individuals. In fact the free choice of one individual is the oppression of another; a good example of this is abortion law. I think that there should be as much freedom as possible but the law has to fall somewhere and better and happier (which is no bad thing) that it should fall nearer to prudery than to prurience.

[@michaele.2583]

Dont worry: I perfectly understood that you disagree, and that according to you the law should be closer to prudishness than to free choice (what you call prurience), and I m not surprised that you wouldn´t call that tyranny but rather"happyness" or "interest of the greater good" or simply "law". Im quite sure, that Augustin, the old church-father for example, wouldnt have called himself a tyrannt, nor feel to be one too, when after an orgiastic youth he was hit by a certain hangover and took care, that nobody else like he would have to suffer the same pains, with a similar peace of hypocrisy, which in his case became the foundation of 2000 years christian ethics in respect to sexuality. Really, Im not surprised at all, but in the contrary: I would be very surprised when a square or petty bourgeoise who has all the sexual freedoms he needs for himself, would be honest enough to admit his incompetence to judge for others in this respect. Dont worry, I disagree with you, Augustinus or Scruton and the whole bunch of you exactly as much, but I agree in one point: such "laws" have to fall, instead of being resurrected! They have to fall before the feet of the defiled but real right of the free and self-responsible individual superject! So dont forget, that you can talk as pruriently about law as much as you want, all you have on your side is your opinion, and that of some others, but what I have is the right!

[@tonyforeman9502]

So the right to 'free choice' is your all-in-all. But people's choices and interests differ. So whose 'freedom' are we talking about? This is a basis for chaos. When I say the laws have to 'fall' somewhere I mean they have to take some form. I think it best that they 'fall' in line with natural law as much as possible. Yes as understood by me, Scruton and Augustine! We did not invent these laws - which we consider freeing - only recognised them, along with the majority of mankind. Your kind of free choice is licence not liberty.