I’m reading this book called The Ethics of Memory, which is really amazing. I’ve marginalia-ed it up. It’s so amazing.
Anyway, Margalit talks about…well, lots of stuff, but his writing makes me constantly think of three things: The Moviegoer, human rights law, and On Beauty and Being Just. First, all of this thinking makes me feel super educated and smart. Second, and more importantly, I’m beginning to make more tangible connections among beauty and human rights and the idea of a “search.” Don’t you love it when things like this happen?
Which brings me to a somewhat unimportant but significant dilemma: what is beauty? Mr. Frazier believed that beauty is the promise of happiness. Our Aesthetics of Beauty class also explored the idea that beauty is the familiar. In a paper freshmen year, I delcared that beauty is the constant. Tonight, in the margins of my book, I wrote “beauty = promise of happiness = promise of pleasure = dignity?”
Anyway, I hope you’re always on the search for beauty.