Author: John Lane
Publisher: Viveka Foundation
Year: 2004
Language: English
Pages: 176
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8188251186
Description
Once people were instinctively tuned to the beautiful. In those distant days before the advent of the motor car and the washing machine, the electric toothbrush and the wheel, craftsmen and musicians, masons and poets, painters and dancers simply did not know how to make an ugly thing; they could not close their hearts to the light of heaven. For them, countless numbers of them, beauty was as necessary as the air they breathed. It gave dignity and meaning to drab and impoverished lives, and inspired great (and often brutal) civilizations in which people lived creative and useful lives.
Beauty is the nourishment of the soul. It is something that gives us dignity as a species. John lane calls us to awaken to the possibilities of a culture that recognises the importance of beauty, and to acknowledge that we are only fully human when in contact with the beautiful.
REVIEW
I see this courageous book as a sign marking the beginning of the end of the tide of materialism that has prevailed for the last century. It meets a deep and as yet scarcely recognised need. We disregard and undervalue the beautiful at our peril.
-From the foreword by Kathleen Raine
Contents
Foreword by Kathleen Raine
Preface
Introduction
CHAPTER ONE
The Consolations of Beauty
CHAPTER TWO
Some Origins of Beauty
CHAPTER THREE
Varieties of Aesthetic Experience
CHAPTER FOUR
The Everlasting Stream
CHAPTER FIVE
The Birth of Ugliness
CHAPTER SIX
Signposts on the Road To Beauty
CHAPTER SEVEN
The World Will Be Saved By Beauty
Notes
Bibliography
Index