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Beauty At WorkAuthor: Brandon Vaidyanathan
Beauty at Work expands our understanding of beauty: what it is, how it works, and why it matters. Sociologist Brandon Vaidyanathan interviews scientists, artists, entrepreneurs, and leaders across diverse fields to reveal new insights into how beauty shapes our brains, behaviors, organizations, and societies--for good and for ill. Learn how to harness the power of beauty in your life and work, while avoiding its pitfalls. Language: en-us Genres: Science, Society & Culture Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it Trailer: |
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Can Beauty Save the World? with Charles Taylor, Sean Kelly, Elaine Scarry, Richard Kearney
Wednesday, 25 March, 2026
This is the opening panel for the international symposium "Can beauty save the world?" held at McGill University, Montreal, Oct 24-25, 2025.We begin with introductions from Dan Cere (McGill), Brandon Vaidyanathan (Catholic University of America), Charles Taylor (McGill), and Tara Isabella Burton (Catholic University of America), followed by a panel discussion between Sean Kelly (Harvard), Elaine Scarry (Harvard), and Richard Kearney (Boston College), moderated by Bill Barbieri (Catholic University of America)Sean Kelly reflected that beauty moves us beyond ourselves. It saves us from the flattening of meaningful differences. To encounter beauty is to order one’s life around the object of love. When we long for others to share in that recognition, we glimpse beauty’s political potential—it calls us into conversation rather than conflict.Elaine Scarry deepened that insight, reminding us that the opposite of beauty is not ugliness, but injury. Beauty and justice both arise from a sense of fairness and the desire to repair harm. Beauty’s lasting impact, she noted, is generative—it makes us want to create.Richard Kearney drew on Gerard Manley Hopkins’s image of the “pied” world—speckled, varied, alive with difference. Beauty, he said, is not pure symmetry but aftering: it often arrives through suffering and loss, reconciling the universal and the particular.And Charles Taylor reminded us that beauty cannot be defined apart from itself. Its relation to truth is reciprocal, not hierarchical. To understand one, we must hold the other in view. “That,” he said, “is how beauty can save the world.”The symposium was sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation.Learn more at www.canbeautysavetheworld.com and www.beautyatwork.net#beautyatwork #beauty #aesthetics #philosophy #philosophyofbeautySupport the show
