Go here to download colleague Kenny Ching's latest piece, Beauty and Ugliness in Offer and Acceptance. Enough of utilitarian efficiency or Kantian autonomy! Let's get back to the regularly overlooked transcendental category, beauty, and see how contract law measure against it.
Beauty (proportion, integrity, and clarity) have just as much claim to be the standard of the law as the True and the Good, or at least so would any Thomist argue. And, in any event, much more than tawdry welfare maximization. As Dutch theologian-scholar Herman Bavinck reminds us,
Beauty (proportion, integrity, and clarity) have just as much claim to be the standard of the law as the True and the Good, or at least so would any Thomist argue. And, in any event, much more than tawdry welfare maximization. As Dutch theologian-scholar Herman Bavinck reminds us,
Beauty is different from either of those [truth and goodness ] in that it does not have its own content, and thus it is not coordinated with or on a par with the true and the good; beauty always derives its content from the true and the good, and it is their revelation and appearance. Beauty thus consists in the agreement with content and form, with essence (idea) and appearance; it exists in harmony, proportion, unity in diversity, organization, glow, glory, shining, fullness, perfection revealed or whatever one wants to name it. But beauty always is in relation to form, revelation, and appearance.But read Kenny's piece for yourself. It's short and to the point.
Interesting piece! Thanks for sharing. It is short but very clear.
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