On Beauty

The same thing happened with minimalism and companies like Apple and Blue Bottle. They absolutely nailed it. But then came the copycats. They looked at the tree above the surface, but forgot about the root structure. They copied the surface, and what underpinned the original began to disappear. This created a poor imitation of minimalism, which is... See more

When we put people in an ugly, uninspiring place, we are conveying that they deserve something less than the best.... When we put people in a beautiful environment – and one that they had a voice in creating – then it is only natural that we will create a community which is ready to cultivate solidarity and equity.... We know that the environment... See more

All this is prologue to the second argument, which is that beauty is conducive to the desire for justice. When we behold the beautiful, we learn to be attentive to the world, and when we are attentive to the world, we notice injustice. The aesthetic sense is disinterested and generous-the more we love the beauty of the sky or flowers, the more we... See more

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.

We think of aesthetics as superficial, but style is an external expression of a culture’s inner spirit.

First, beauty evokes a longing for fullness and creation, even in the form of duplication. We want to tell others about beautiful paintings we have seen, beautiful songs we have heard, even beautiful arguments we have read. The desire to spread the beauty one beholds acts as a force not only for beauty but also for truth. "[T]he beautiful person or... See more