Beauty, virtue, and religious exemplars

This article explores the beauty of religious exemplars - those special persons whose conduct and comportment marks their life out as one that exemplifies a religious life. Such exemplars are consistently described as beautiful, but it is not clear how or why. I suggest that we can make sense of the...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Kidd, Ian James 1983- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Cambridge Univ. Press [2017]
In: Religious studies
Year: 2017, Volume: 53, Issue: 2, Pages: 171-181
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Religious leader / Perfection / Beauty
RelBib Classification:AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism
AG Religious life; material religion
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
Volltext (doi)
Description
Summary:This article explores the beauty of religious exemplars - those special persons whose conduct and comportment marks their life out as one that exemplifies a religious life. Such exemplars are consistently described as beautiful, but it is not clear how or why. I suggest that we can make sense of the aesthetic aspect of religious exemplarity by adopting a ‘virtue-centric' theory of beauty that understands the beautiful in terms of the expression or manifestation of virtues. Religious exemplars are those who have cultivated their virtues to an advanced degree and are beautiful for that reason. Attending to the beauty of religious exemplars can enrich exemplarist virtue theory, the aesthetics of character, and our understanding of the nature of a religious life.
ISSN:1469-901X
Contains:Enthalten in: Religious studies
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1017/S0034412515000578