Of Beauty and Power

Preview: /Roger Scruton interviewed by Mikołaj Sławkowski-Rode/ Beauty and power (here I mean primarily political power) have a relationship with a long and turbulent history perhaps first explicitly acknowledged by Plato. Beauty is often employed in the service of power (national anthems, and emblems are perhaps the most obvious example), but sometimes also serves to undermine it (as the works of the romantic Polish poets in exile did). Likewise power has at times been the protector of beauty (during the reign of the Medici’s for instance) and at others its persecutor (in Soviet Russia for example, where its appreciation was a hallmark of the bourgeois heresy, or currently in the areas controlled by ISIS where in many cases it’s blasphemy). Can beauty be innocent serving any kind of power, or will it be corrupted if the power it serves is? Conversely can legitimate power use beauty without damaging it?