By Deepa Majumdar
Racism has many expressions and dimensions. As a form of hatred it expresses the will-to-power. Premised on a racialized notion of physical beauty, it also implicates a highly subjective aesthetic judgment. Because race is a physical moniker, racism has a corporeal dimension – with an unavoidable aesthetic aspect. Mankind’s tendency to sectarianism, which exacerbates the will-to-power, becomes aesthetic, when beauty aligns itself with power, severing itself from goodness.
Thus, colonialism left the colonized feeling inferior before white people – not only morally and mentally, but also aesthetically. Caucasian phenotypes, of which, color is but one, were deemed aesthetically superior to those of the black or brown person. Of these phenotypes, blond hair and blue eyes, became iconic in the colonial consciousness as symbols of true beauty, thereby defining their opposites as ugly. For, as one among the pairs of opposites, beauty and ugliness define and limit one another.
To understand this type of evil aesthetics and the power it wields, we must first understand external beauty. What is beauty and why does it matter? Aesthetic judgment is one among many types of human judgment. The human eye constantly seeks beauty, relishing the beautiful and revolted by the ugly. Like beauty, aesthetic judgment comes at myriad levels – ranging from the exterior to the interior, from the subjective to the objective, and from the material to the moral and the supra-moral. The more we descend into the body, through heightened body-consciousness, the more we seek power (rather than goodness). As a result, the more we decline towards subjective aesthetics. Thus it is not easy to define beauty or why it matters. Material beauty is, at best, a hint at true spiritual beauty, and at worst, an apparition that beguiles us despite being unreal. If physical beauty matters, this is only because at its highest, it points the way to divine beauty. Restless with thirst for beauty, our eyes are yet always discontented with material beauty, because it lacks the power to satiate. At best, it hints at the splendor of true spiritual beauty, which alone has the power to slake our thirst for beauty.
What are the different levels of beauty? At its lowest, beauty is material. This includes not only beauty of the human body, but of all material objects, whether sentient or not. This therefore includes beauty of objects in the world of nature. Thus the waterfall is beautiful, as is the emerald forest. This also includes those aspects of beauty – like symmetry and proportionality – that draw unanimous acclamations. Material beauty brims with multiplicity because it is a compound of different bits of beauty – a conglomeration of aesthetic expressions, each pertaining to a different physical aspect, such as shape, color, symmetry, proportionality, etc.
Clearly this lower material aesthetic judgment lies in the eye of the beholder, so that it varies from person to person. Material beauty can also lie simultaneously, in the eyes of multiple unrelated beholders, who reach a unanimous aesthetic judgment without ever consulting one another. But unanimity does not make material beauty true or objective. Even when unanimous, our material aesthetic judgment remains subjective. It is therefore important to distinguish unanimity from objectivity. Just because everyone agrees with a judgment, need not mean it is true or objective. Thus, symmetry and proportionality need not be truly beautiful, despite the unanimous acclamations they draw. Inasmuch as this lower material beauty lies in the eyes of multiple unanimous beholders, it is entirely subjective. For, the human eye can be mob-like, especially when impassioned. Mobs, as we know, are unanimous, without thought, debate, or discussion. Collective and unanimous aesthetic judgments, in their raw subjectivity, can also be amoral and utilitarian. Thus there is nothing moral about symmetry or proportionality.
In modern man, this subjective notion of material beauty, which pursues power, thus severing itself from ethics, is tyrannical in its constant demand of beauty and revulsion of that which it deems ugly. To want everything to always be physically beautiful is not only tiresome, but unrealistic. A turbulent dance of the pairs of opposites, life sometimes highlights one, and sometimes its opposite. Objectifying the object of beauty, the modern eye contorts it to its own aesthetic demands, causing suffering to this object. Thus, modern man’s tyrannical addiction to beauty contorts the natural object to become what he wants it to be. In its insatiable thirst for physical beauty, the human self degrades the not-self in the natural object. This search for power-driven beauty brings suffering, not only upon those deemed ugly, but also upon the subject and object of material beauty. Aesthetically it degrades those it deems “ugly.” Morally, it degrades to the carnal level, the subject seeking material beauty, but also the object it deems beautiful. For, the carnal eye objectifies and reifies those it deems beautiful – especially women – bringing untold suffering upon them. Thus Princess Diana had to suffer the indignity of a cult-prone Diana-mania.
The problem therefore lies with a carnal definition of beauty, which lies in the eye of the beholder, who worships and wields power through his aesthetic judgment, which he severs from ethics. That which is materially beautiful need not be morally beautiful. When racist, this carnal eye divides humanity into the beautiful and the ugly – deeming those wielding power beautiful, and those disempowered, ugly. As a subjective judgment, this type of evil aesthetics signifies descent into the body, or heightened body-consciousness. It therefore also signifies descent into the pairs of opposites, which make us “love” the beautiful, and loathe its opposite – swinging from extreme to extreme. The racist’s definition of physical beauty is therefore a prime culprit in racism.
By contrast, a higher, more inward sense of beauty, has more to do with moral character. Overcoming the carnal and shunning power, this chaste eye alone is capable of being truly color-blind, because it transcends body-consciousness, so that it can appraise beauty in accordance with virtue alone. By finding beauty in moral character, this chaste glance is egalitarian before all monikers that divide humanity – whether, race, culture, class, or anything else. Unifying humanity, it sees people as good (hence morally beautiful), evil (hence morally ugly), or something in between. Because it is chaste, this eye first loves the beloved and only thereafter, as a consequence, finds the beloved beautiful – as opposed to the unchaste eye, which objectifies and hence hates its object of beauty. Overcoming the material sphere, this chaste eye no longer relies on unanimity for truth, but on a higher moral objectivity. Far more objective than the unchaste, the moral aesthete yokes aesthetics with ethics, unlike the carnal aesthete, who severs aesthetics from ethics. Unlike the carnal eye, which objectifies its object of beauty, the chaste eye uses its greater integrity to bestow holism upon its object, thus revealing its hidden inner beauty.
When Dr. M. L. King said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” he was referring to the chaste eye that does not abdicate the reality of color or our corporeal phenotypes, but transcends body consciousness to see inner beauty. This penetrating gaze means an all-holy aesthetic indifference to the corporeal, which is what true color-blindness should be about. Transcending power and the carnal sphere, thus detaching itself from physical appearance, the chaste eye, which draws aesthetics from ethics, focuses exclusively on inner beauty of moral character. By contrast, sectarianism pursues power, dividing humanity into those it deems beautiful and ugly and using material beauty as the ornate face of lust.
Beauty, therefore, comes in at least two categories – the material (or carnal), and the moral. Moreover, the material sphere has three types of beauty – that which lies in the eyes of the beholder, aspects of beauty (like symmetry, or proportionality) that lie in the eyes of multiple unanimous beholders, and divine beauty that shines through the material world. Like the first, the second too is subjective and severed from ethics, notwithstanding its unanimity. But raw divine beauty inspires something more than mere unanimity. Transcending ethics, it uses the material sphere as its conduit. Thus, a glorious sunrise, although physical, inspires in us a sense of awe, so that our aesthetic response far exceeds unanimity. The same may be said of a sunset, or a star-studded sky or an erupting volcano. As conduits of divine beauty they soothe us, but also make us awe-struck. For raw divine beauty expresses itself in myriad ways. Of this last level of material- beauty-as-divine-conduit, therefore, we may say that even if it is not primarily moral to being with, it gains moral and supra-moral status by serving as a Eucharist of divine beauty.