Running Head: WHY BEAUTY MATTERS
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Why Beauty Matters
Shayla Duncan
California Baptist University
BEAUTY
In the documentary Why Beauty Matters, Roger Scruton makes many good points about
how beauty has disappeared in today’s society, but he also has quite a few viewpoints that I
don’t agree with. According to Scruton, if you asked a person what the object of art was any
time between the years of 1750 and 1930, that person would answer that are art was made to
create beauty. Scruton claims that “beauty is value, as important as truth and goodness”. Then,
in the 20th century, the importance of beauty began to diminish, and art began to evolve into
what Scruton would consider to be “ugly”. The purpose of art changes from beautiful things,
such as portraits and sceneries, to works that were created to disturb and shock the viewer.
Originality became the goal of art, no matter the moral cost. Scruton believed that this type of
art has created a “cult of ugliness” and has also made architecture “soulless and sterile”.
