Aesthetic injustice

Daisy Dixon, a prize-winning art philosopher, introduced the idea of 'aesthetic injustice', a type of injustice when one is deprived of access to art or beauty. Denotatively, it is when we unfairly judge, exclude or devalue someone on the basis of their look, style, taste or sensory qualities. However, outer beauty must not be equated with moral worth. Aesthetic beauty lies in what one does, says or contributes to impart excellence in things around, animate or inanimate. Connotatively, 'an aesthetic injustice is a social arrangement that harms people in their aesthetic capacities, such as capacities to appreciate, make, curate or collect.' Aesthetic injustice is meted out to people when they are not made capable of delivering up to their potential.

This idea leads us to economist-philosopher Amartya Sen's 'capability approach'. The approach postulates that 'freedom to achieve well-being is a matter of what people are able to do and to be.' It defines 'a good life not by income or utility, but by what people are actually able to do and be' - focusing on real opportunities ("capabilities") required for a life worthy of human dignity. Capabilities are the real freedoms that enable people to consummate their doings and beings. The approach focuses more on telos than on resources.

In the 1980s, philosopher Martha Nussbaum contributed to the theory of the 'capability approach' by saying that along with physical needs - food, water and housing - humans need healthy interactions with people, means of expression, rest, play and education to ensure an aesthetic existence. Dixon's aesthetic injustice aligns closely with Nussbaum's 'capability approach' when she says, "For me, aesthetic agency is our ability to experience the world aesthetically and to express ourselves aesthetically.... It also includes our ability to express ourselves through what we wear, the music we listen to, and the art we make." Being an educationist, my extrapolation is, "... our ability to be educated as per what we are gifted with." Nussbaum adds: "All these things are part of what it is to be human."

Jonny Thomson, a teacher of philosophy in Oxford and columnist at Big Think, extrapolates three types of aesthetic injustice. The first type is committed when 'you deny somebody access to their own preferences or tastes.' We not only stop others from doing what they want to according to their own thinking or wishes, but rather we thrust upon them alternatives, vicariously selected. It's a way of hijacking someone's mind.

The second is 'when somebody is denied access to beautiful things.' The denial is similar to the one depicted in George Orwell's 1984. A type of grey dystopia devoid of all colours. No fun, no curiosity, no leisure, everything dull and drab. An ascetic sort of existence is idealised. In our Asian religious cultures, such an injustice is justified putatively under the name of morality and equality. Availing books, music, art or leisure is considered self-indulgence. Even urban planning is dubbed as a misprioritisation.

Finally, the third is 'when someone is prevented from expressing themselves.' Being creative or using imagination is forbidden like a canonical diktat. In 1969, John Lennon was quoted as saying, "Every child is an artist until he's told he's not an artist." Educationally, every child is a student until he is told he's not a student - a living entity capable of learning and creating. And what an execrable inhuman act it would be to deprive a child of his inner voice.

"We are born with a near bottomless well of creativity and unquenchable thirst for beauty," asserts Jonny Thomson. There is no law court where aesthetic injustice can be challenged, but only the court of social conscience can deliver aesthetic justice to the victims. And it can only be delivered when one is allowed to do and be according to their preferences or tastes, when one is allowed to have access to beauty and its manifests, and when one is allowed to speak their mind and heart out.