'When faced with the myth, the questions to ask are not about women’s faces and bodies but about the power relations of the situation. Who is this serving? Who says? Who profits? What is the context?
A woman’s appearance is more often called to her attention for a political reason than as a constituent of genuine attraction and desire. We can learn to get better at telling the difference - a liberating skill in itself. We need not condemn lust, seduction, or physical attraction—a much more democratic and subjective quality than the market would like us to discover—we need only to reject political manipulation.'
"Churches once held sacred are now but heaps of dust and ashes; and yet we have our minds set on the desire of gain. We live as though we were going to die tomorrow; yet we build as though we were going to live always in this world. Our walls shine with gold, our celings also... yet Christ dies before our doors naked and hungry in the person of his poor."
"Like the pleasure of friendship, the pleasure of beauty is curious. It aims to understand its object, and to value what it finds. Hence it tends toward a judgement of its own validity. And like every other rational judgement, this one makes implicit appeal to the community of rational beings. This is what Kant meant when he said that, in the judgement of taste, I am 'a suitor for agreement', expressing my judgement not as a private opinion but as a binding verdict that would be agreed upon by all."
roger scruton | immanuel kant | jack black | high fidelity
"Few people would fall in love had they never heard of love. Passion and expression are not really seperable. Passion comes to birth in that powerful impetus of the mind which also brings language into existence. So soon as passion goes beyond instinct and becomes truly itself, it tends toward self-description, either in order to justify or intensify its being, or else simply in order to keep going.
pre-raphaelites | denis de rougement | love | passion | beata beatrix
"When I want to make a statue of a beautiful woman, I have a great number of them undress; all offer both beautiful parts and badly shaped parts; I take from each what is beautiful."
'Its time now for all the "fortunate" ones, the cheerleaders and football jocks to strip down naked in front of the entire school at an assembly and plead with every ounce of their souls for mercy and forgiveness, and to admit they are wrong. They are representatives of gluttony and selfish values, and to say that they are sorry for condoning these things, no that will not be enough...'
