The Morality and Aesthetics of Personal Beauty

Acta Analytica:1-13 (forthcoming)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This paper argues that people commonly make moral and aesthetic errors regarding personal beauty. One moral error involves treating people as if their superficial physical beauty is a key source of their value. This practice immorally objectifies people by treating them as aesthetic objects, such as paintings or sunsets, rather than persons. Physical personal beauty is overrated. And even to the extent to which it may be appropriate to appreciate personal beauty, people still commonly make an aesthetic error by treating people as if their aesthetic value derives primarily from how their faces and bodies look. We thereby overlook much of their aesthetic value, including their aesthetic agency—which involves the aesthetic choices that shape people’s appearance and conduct, as well as their inner selves and character. Moreover, tending to a person’s fuller aesthetic value may mitigate harmful consequences of lookism.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 101,505

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Personal Beauty and Personal Agency.Madeline Martin-Seaver - 2023 - Philosophy Compass 18 (12):e12953.
The Semantics of Aesthetic Judgements.James O. Young (ed.) - 2017 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
Précis of Being for Beauty: Aesthetic Agency and Value.Dominic McIver Lopes - 2021 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 102 (1):209-213.
Beauty in nature, beauty in art.Christopher Janaway - 1993 - British Journal of Aesthetics 33 (4):321-332.
Good Looking.Jennifer Matey - 2016 - Philosophical Issues 26 (1):297-313.
Being for Beauty: Aesthetic Agency and Value. [REVIEW]Andrew Huddleston - 2021 - Philosophical Quarterly 71 (3):645-647.
Beauty and Aesthetic Properties: Taking Inspiration from Kant.Sonia Sedivy - 2019 - In Wolfgang Huemer & Íngrid Vendrell Ferran (eds.), Beauty: New Essays in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art. München, Deutschland: Philosophia. pp. 25 - 41.
Aesthetic Injustice.Dominic Mciver Lopes - 2024 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Analytics

Added to PP
2025-01-07

Downloads
41 (#548,831)

6 months
41 (#108,133)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author Profiles

David Friedell
Union College
Madeleine Ransom
University of British Columbia, Okanagan

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Freedom and Resentment.Peter Strawson - 1962 - Proceedings of the British Academy 48:187-211.
What We Epistemically Owe To Each Other.Rima Basu - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (4):915–931.
Objectification.Martha C. Nussbaum - 1995 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 24 (4):249-291.
Aesthetic Hedonism and Its Critics.Servaas Van der Berg - 2020 - Philosophy Compass 15 (1):e12645.
Why Yellow Fever Isn't Flattering: A Case Against Racial Fetishes.Robin Zheng - 2016 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 2 (3):400-419.

View all 27 references / Add more references