Why Beauty Matters: Film Screening and Discussion

A screening of the documentary film “Why Beauty Matters” by the late British philosopher Sir Roger Scruton will be held at the Canon Free Library in Delhi on Sunday November 13 at 2:30 pm. A discussion following the film will be led by award-winning poet and writer Marly Youmans; publisher, public historian, and historic preservationist Maureen Krueger; neurologist Michael Miller; and Orthodox priest Father James Krueger. The library is located at 40 Elm Street in Delhi. This event is sponsored by Cloud-Bearing Mountain Christian Retreat and Saint Herman of Alaska Orthodox Church in Bovina. The event is free and open to all. For more information call 607-326-0052, email info@cbmountain.org, or visit www.cbmountain.org.

“Why Beauty Matters” presents a fascinating argument for the importance of beauty in our art and in our lives, and explores what truly is and is not beautiful, regardless of its beholder. Scruton contends that beauty has been systematically disappearing from our world. It is being replaced by a kind of expression that seeks to disturb and break moral taboos, to assert individualism, appeal to the novel, and to show the ugliness of our world without reference to what is beautiful and redemptive. As Scruton puts it, “The great artists of the past were aware that human life is full of chaos and suffering, but, they had a remedy for this and the name of that remedy was beauty. The beautiful work of art brings consolation in sorrow and affirmation in joy. It shows human life to be worthwhile.”