Elaine Scarry's views of beauty and justice/fairness

Scarry's piece on beauty goes into great deatil of what defines beauty and its different interpretations and perceptions. She describes how due to political complaints, beauty is being banished. on pg. 74 she descirbes how some might merely say, ""We just no longer see beauty in the same way." But how can that be an acceptable answer if---as an outcome of this newly acquired, wretched immunity---people are asking us to give up beauty althogether?" She feels that beauty is very important. In fact through this piece I have come to see a different view of beauty.

She explains that noticing somethings beauty increases the gentleness and/or the respect we feel it deserves. So noticing an objects beauty in fact benefits the object more times than not. She points out that beauty is what helps us see an object for what is really is and grant it justice.
On pg. 65 she writes, "The lotus shapes of the lips, eyes, hands, and postures are sculpted into stone and wood by the adoring hands of worshipers, not the hands of detractors."

She points out that it is the justice and respect the worships hold for there supreme being that allows them to glorify there beliefs and have the patience and zeal to make such an amazing object. A few pages later she goes on to say, "Far from subtracting or robbing fragility from the ordinary vase, the extraordinary vase involuntarily introduced me to the recognition that vases are fragile, and I then voluntarily extend the consequences of that recognition to other objects in the same category" With recognition of beauty we do justice to the object by recognizing its awe and treating other of its type with same respect. We do the object justice by seeing what it truly is and the qualities it pertains.

Another point she makes is on the fact that people go in search of beauty and yet have no intent on becoming beautiful. She states that this is amazing because it cannot be done with other things that are pursued. She lists truth as an example. "It would be hard to make that same description of someone pursuing truth if one had no interest in becoming knowledgeable?" (pg. 87) She explains that it wouldnt be possible for someone to pursue something else and not be affected. She goes on to say that people in search of beauty are affected regardless of there intent. Either through there inner lives or through there "fairness", that is, there distribution. She says on pg. 90 that beauty is a compact, or contract between the beautiful being and the perceiver. She goes on to say that this voluntary disbribution between the two is equal through fairness, that is a fair disbritution that is already a part of the way we think and speak about justice. It causes a symmetry of everyones relation to one another, as defined by John Rawls.

I feel that I must agree with Scarry on her point of view. I agree that beauty helps us see th greatness of object and that it does indeed cause us to unvoluntarily treat it with care. Most of this happeneing unconsciously. It is human nature to take notice to what we perceive as beauty and to grant it with the justice and kindness we feel it deserves or needs. I agree that beauty should not be diminished and people should understand what beauty does for human nature and how it affects our thoughts and our actions because of it.