The Forgotten Virtue: Beauty in an Age of Ugliness
A Reflection on Roger Scruton’s Documentary “Why Beauty Matters”
In an era where shock value trumps harmony, and originality at any cost is celebrated above skill, Roger Scruton’s documentary “Why Beauty Matters” stands as a profound and necessary defense of what we have lost in the arts.
In this post, I want to explore Scruton’s arguments about beauty’s place in our world, share my thoughts as someone who has learned (and experimented with) both sides, and consider what it might mean for us to reclaim beauty in an age that seems determined to reject it.
The Fall From Grace
Scruton begins with an observation: between 1750 and 1930, if you had asked educated people to describe the aim of poetry, art, or music, they would have replied, “beauty.” Beauty was considered a value as significant as truth and goodness.
Then something changed. In the twentieth century, beauty stopped being important. Art became more about disturbing and breaking moral taboos. Originality, however achieved and at whatever moral cost, became the highest virtue.
This shift has always seemed like an insult to everything that came before it. The classical tradition understood that beauty isn’t merely decorative or subjective but reflects a divine order and harmony that transcends the material world. In Plato’s words, beauty is a glimpse of the eternal.
The Cult of Ugliness
I remember my first encounter with Marcel Duchamp’s urinal in my university’s History of Art lecture. We had just finished studying Cubism and Fauvism, and instead of being excited to learn about Dada, I felt insulted. Duchamp wasn’t expanding my notion of beauty—he was mocking it.
When I stand in front of pieces like that, I don’t feel elevated; I feel diminished. The emperor has no clothes, yet we’re all expected to nod appreciatively. Scruton uses a phrase that perfectly captures the entirety of my studies on art in the 20th century: “the cult of ugliness.”
Beyond the Gallery Walls
But what makes Scruton’s critique so powerful is that he doesn’t limit it to the rarefied world of galleries and museums. He shows how abandoning beauty has transformed our lived environment.
Modern architecture, with its sterile boxes and inhuman scale, has created spaces that alienate rather than welcome. It’s ironic because so many of them have glass walls, giving literal meaning to the Dalai Lama’s quote, “there is much in the window, but nothing in the room.” Scruton says it a little more bluntly as he walks through an abandoned housing development in his hometown, now covered in graffiti: “This place was built by vandals, and those who added the graffiti merely finished the job.”
The classical tradition in architecture understood something: buildings should embody harmony, proportion, and human scale. The classical orders—Doric, Ionic, Corinthian—weren’t arbitrary but reflected a deep understanding of visual harmony derived from nature and the human form. When we abandoned these principles in favor of Le Corbusier’s “machines for living,” we didn’t create efficiency but alienation.
Scruton again says, “If you consider only utility, the things you build will soon be useless.”
The Moral Dimension & The False Gods of Modernism
What troubles me most about modern art’s rejection of beauty is its moral dimension. The classical concept of “kalokagathia” linked the beautiful with the good. By treating beauty as optional or even suspect, modernism has contributed to moral confusion. I believe surrounding humans with beauty cultivates virtue; surrounding them with ugliness fosters vice. This isn’t just sentimentality, but psychological truth. We become what we contemplate.
Classical art understood itself as part of a continuous tradition, building upon and refining what came before. Modern art’s obsession with originality and contempt for the past represents a form of hubris—the belief that a single generation can discard centuries of accumulated wisdom and start anew.
Is There Hope?
So what’s the way forward? Like Scruton, I don’t advocate simple nostalgia or mere imitation of past styles. Instead, I yearn for a reconnection with the timeless principles that guided Western art for centuries: harmony, proportion, skill, tradition, and the pursuit of beauty as a reflection of divine order.
Some will dismiss this view as conservative or backward-looking. But I see nothing progressive about the cult of ugliness. Actual progress in art has always come through mastery of form and tradition, not through their rejection. The modernist experiment has had a century to prove itself, and the results are soulless cities, alienated citizens, and an art world increasingly irrelevant to ordinary people’s lives.
As Scruton puts it:
“I think we are losing beauty. And there is a danger that, with it, we will lose the meaning of life.”
This isn’t hyperbole to me. Beauty matters because it connects us to something beyond ourselves—to others, to tradition, to the transcendent. In a world increasingly dominated by market values and technological efficiency, beauty reminds us that we are more than consumers or producers. We are spiritual beings capable of recognizing and creating beauty.
Scruton’s message is a rallying cry for me and others committed to classical aesthetics. We must defend beauty not out of nostalgia but out of love for humanity’s highest possibilities. I must create and support art that aspires to beauty rather than mere novelty or shock. And I must always assess whether my work merits reflection. Does it elevate the human spirit? Will it speak to future generations or just shock my own?
These are the questions that beauty demands of us. In answering them, we might rediscover what truly matters.
What are your thoughts on beauty in modern art? Do you find yourself drawn to classical aesthetics, or do you see value in art that challenges traditional notions of beauty? DM me on Instagram and let’s get a conversation going!
© 2025 Visaic. All Rights Reserved.