We are not equally beautiful

The modern attack on beauty is in part politically motivated: it is an article of faith with many on the left that all men are created equal; to their minds, from this it must follow that they must all be equally talented (“differently abled”) and equally beautiful and equally gifted with equally valid taste.

Which, of course, it does not follow, not least because men are not created equal. By birth some of us are richer than others, more intelligent, more healthy, more talented, and, yes, more beautiful. And others are less so. Nature is not even handed. Nature is not interested in justice.

Men are only made equal – in some ways – by the democratic constitution: it sets out to ameliorate the inequality which exists at birth. This form of constitution grows out of the moral decision to treat all men equally in some areas despite their obviously not in any way being equal. Democratic equality grows out of man’s decision to rise above nature, to correct it. This makes it more admirable, to my eyes, than if it had been based on some factually documented equality: adherence to democratic principles means that the better endowed sacrifice some of their natural advantages in the name of a perceived brotherhood with other, less able men. For the less able men, this is good; of the more able men, this is noble.

Now, democracy establishes men’s equality before the law; their equal access to the benefits of the state and equal obligations with respect to it; and their equal voting power. But democracy does not make all men equally beautiful anymore than it makes them equally wise or equally tall.

Nor does democracy alter the manner in which we experience our private selves. For example, while it is not permissible to the state to deny a person a service because they are ugly, as individuals managing our own lives we must not be obliged to sleep with an ugly person because it would be unjust not to do so. More generally, we must not accept ugliness in our private life because ugliness is a sort of misery and leads to unhappiness.

In fact, in our private lives, we must not concede any democratic principles: in our private lives people are not equal but organized in hierarchies of family, lovers, friends, acquaintances, strangers, each with a different bond to us, with different specific importance. Democratic principles of equality do not apply in our private lives because democratic principles are exclusively for the public life.

This means that we must learn to carry in our heads two sets of principles simultaneously: the democratic set for public life and another, undemocratic, for our private lives; and that we must not confuse them; only if we maintain absolutely clarity about the two spheres of life, and about which rules apply where, can we act wisely and with satisfactory results.

All questions of aesthetics belong properly in the second, private sphere: aesthetics is about our private perceptions of beauty and ugliness and the private actions we take based on these perceptions. That it is so is illustrated by the failure of all important books on aesthetics heretofore – from Plato to Adorno – which have all insisted on relating the questions of beauty and ugliness to social factors – political power, modes of production, etc. The truth they have all failed to grasp – and sometimes attempted to obscure – is that perceptions of beauty and ugliness are subject to rules which have nothing to do with social justice.