Many of us (myself included) are guilty of passing judgement on great books because of their jaded or pale or lackluster appearance or accompanying artistic material. Something which all too often prevents us from tapping into the insights which great authors or great content producers provide to us.
In the digital age, the equivalent effect is our perception of stock photos, the images which accompany the articles that publications like the ones found on Medium produce.
How often have we decided to pass up the opportunity to read something interesting because of a badly selected stock photo, or scrolled through a Medium article hurryingly as we pass judgement on the content of the article.
But do we ever stop to think, to think about the awesome content we are missing when we make value judgements about articles or books, or podcasts, or even people. I’d argue that the answer to that question is nay.
Why did I choose to write an entire post on this topic? The answer can be found in the pages of a book I recently purchased by Henry Allison, on the topic of the Transcendental Aesthetic.
Allison, goes to painstaking lengths (through the use of complex metaphysical arguments) to attempt to prove to its reader that the reasoning which German Philosopher, Kant used in his various intertextual critiques had something quite important to say on the topic, and the reasoning as to why human beings make value judgements about abstract concepts such as beauty and appeal.
In that sense, beauty is very much relative. What I find beautiful, you may not find beautiful and what I hold dear to my heart as something which retains aesthetic value, you may view through a lens of normality.
This may include books, and their covers. That will always be the case unfortunately, so I guess this article is just a polite means of drawing our attention to the beauty within the pages of your next read.
Happy reading!
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