Music
Roger Scruton
The Aesthetics of Music
On what it means to hear music as music — as a sequence of intentions rather than a sequence of sounds, and why the disciplined ear is a moral achievement.
Oxford University Press
1997
Books
The wiki reads these closely, selects from them carefully, and in places extends their arguments. Readers who find the wiki useful are encouraged to read the originals.
Cross-domain
Daisy Fancourt
Art Cure
The empirical case — from 30,000 studies — that sustained engagement with art is a pillar of health: the science behind what elegance already knows about beauty and well-being.
Celadon Books / Cornerstone
2025
Philosophy
John C.H. Wu
The Art of Law — and Other Essays Juridical and Literary
A foundational text in legal philosophy, this collection bridges Eastern and Western thought, arguing for law as an art form centred on the aesthetic and functional balancing of interests.
The Commercial Press, Shanghai
1936
Beauty
Roger Scruton
Beauty — A Very Short Introduction
The philosophical case that beauty is not decoration but judgement — a quiet act of recognition in which a particular thing is permitted to stand for the order it belongs to.
Oxford University Press
2009
Philosophy
Francis-Noël Thomas
& Mark Turner
Clear and Simple as the Truth — Writing Classic Prose
The argument that writing is a conceptual stand, not a skill — and that classic style, like elegance, is a discipline of selection: the refusal of the superfluous.
Princeton University Press
1994
Philosophy
Mark Dooley
Conversations with Roger Scruton
The most candid account of Scruton's intellectual life — architecture, music, religion, beauty, and the philosophy of home — in his own words, at Sunday Hill Farm.
Bloomsbury / Continuum
2016
Interiors
Edith Wharton
& Ogden Codman Jr.
The Decoration of Houses
The argument that proportion, not ornament, governs a room — and that a house must be settled architecturally before it is furnished.
Charles Scribner's Sons
1897
Philosophy
C. S. Lewis
An Experiment in Criticism
This work proposes an inversion of literary criticism, suggesting that books should be judged by the quality of reading they permit, rather than readers by their preferences.
Cambridge University Press
1961
Dress
Geneviève Antoine Dariaux
A Guide to Elegance
The directrice of Nina Ricci's Paris couture salons on how to dress, how to choose, and why it matters. Sixty-two alphabetical entries, from Accessories to Zoology.
Doubleday, New York
1964
Beauty
Elaine Scarry
On Beauty and Being Just
The argument that beauty is not a distraction from justice but a training in it — that to be stopped by a beautiful thing is to practise recognising what stands, and makes a claim, independently of us.
Princeton University Press
1999
Music
Roger Scruton
Understanding Music: Philosophy and Interpretation
Roger Scruton offers a philosophical defence of the acousmatic account of musical experience, applying his aesthetic framework to extended critical essays on major composers.
Bloomsbury Academic
2016