The author’s argument is that beauty, far from contributing to social injustice by distracting or remaining neutral to injustice, “actually assist us in the work of addressing injustice, not only by requiring of us constant perceptual acuity -high dives of seeing, hearing, touching, but by more directs forms of instruction and action.”

Following this, the author identifies four properties of beauty: first, beauty is sacred, it belongs to the realm of divinity, of goodness, of our quest for perfection; second, beauty is unprecedented, in the sense that it is a novel experience for the subject; thirdly, beauty is life-saving; and finally, beauty incites deliberation.

But one day she looked closer and realised how beautiful a palm tree really is. She began to wonder, why did she exclude it from her list of beautiful things? Is this about ideals of beauty linked to a political, racial or social agenda? Questions about human beauty and exclusion are subtly suggested here, which also resonates with what we consider... See more