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STEUBENVILLE, OH—”The search for beauty is the search for home—a place where you can be at home with yourself and others. But particularly, a place where you belong,” said Roger Scruton during his talk, “Beauty and Desecration,” given at the Power of Beauty Conference.

The conference was held at ̽������ on October 24-25, 2014. The speakers, including Scruton who gave the keynote address, discussed the power of beauty to renew individual persons and entire communities, beginning with an examination of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s statement “beauty will save the world.”

Scruton spoke about the role of beauty in everyday life and man’s inclination to desecrate beauty, and that this stems from society’s desire to be markedly different from and reject the norm. He spoke about people’s —especially artists’ — distrust of beauty, and how it has become considered more glamorous to dislike traditional pieces and instead to create pieces so outlandish that they cannot be enjoyed as beautiful art.

“Desecration takes many forms,” said Scruton. “There is a glamour to not being taken in by those things. There is a desire to desecrate those values, like putting graffiti on things. We ask too much of art, and if it disappoints us in that, we start becoming angry with it and disappointment turns to repudiation.”

Scruton is an internationally renowned philosopher who has written over 40 books as well as many crucial studies in applied philosophy, including The Aesthetics of Architecture.

Three videos from the conference can be viewed at : Roger Scruton’s keynote address, the following his talk, and

The conference also featured presentations by the winners of the Graduate Student Essay Contest sponsored by the Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project.

The Power of Beauty Conference was co-sponsored by ̽������’s MA Philosophy Program and the Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project, which is headquartered at ̽������. Scruton’s talk was part of ̽������’s Distinguished Speakers Series.