ErN
41, entry Nov. 2004
Ugliness
| In "Kant's Problems with
Ugliness," the author argues that Kant's
attempt in the third Critique to overcome the
gulf between the realms of nature and freedom,
by showing that the natural or phenomenal
world is receptive to the efficacy of pure
practical reason, is incompatible with the
existence of ugliness… This argument, I
suggest, rests on a failure to recognize
Kant's distinction between aesthetic and
teleological reflective judgment, and evinces
a misunderstanding of the complex and delicate
relationship which Kant constructs on the one
hand and morality on the other. (The
Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
50:4 Fall 1992) |
I couldn't agree more. Or maybe I
couldn't disagree more. (I got lost at "teleological
reflective judgment.") Anyway, it got me thinking
about "ugly." I didn't grow up with that concept.
There were a lot of positive words, such as good looking, beautiful, handsome, etc.
Negatives included plain,
but we never called people ugly. Negative adjectives usually
referred to personality rather than physical
appearance. Thus, a handsome guy could still be a jerk. I wasn't
truly made aware of ugly
as a simple descriptor until I moved to Naples.
A short time after I barreled my lock and stock into a rather large Neapolitan extended family, I ran into one of my extensions on the cable car. I knew he was a relative because I had met him at a family outing, but I really had no idea exactly who he was. Keeping track of my in-laws is an exercise in kinship anthropology of Dostoevskian proportions. (You will recall that Sergei's second cousin's niece's sister, Anna, whose grandmother's stepbrother, Maxim, is really the bastard son of Lt. Kasov's uncle, has been using her maiden name ever since page 445, just to keep you on your toes.) Anyway, (you can get off your toes, now—or at least get off mine) he (my relative, not Dostoevsky —c'mon, pay attention!) recognized me and called me by name, but I couldn't place him. When I reported the incident to my wife, she asked: "Who was it?"
"I don't
know."
"Well, what did he look like?"
"Hair, arms, legs, the usual things. Nice little guy.
Getting along in years. Very amiable."
"Was he ugly?"
Was he ugly?!
Now, that was the first time in my life that I had ever
heard that question! Forget Caucasian male, medium
build, receding hairline, aquiline nose, high
cheekbones, lantern-jawed, almond-eyed, brachycephalic,
identifying marks, scars or tattoos. Why, yes, officer,
I can describe the suspect exactly: he was ugly! How ugly was
he? Well, I'll tellya! Why, he was so ugly …(wake up the
drummer for some rim-shots!) …we didn't know if
that was his face or whether his neck simply had a bad
case of acne! (ka-bam!) Why, his mother used to put a
sack over her own head when she breast-fed him!
(ba-boom!) She tried putting one over his head once,
too, but she got arrested for bag abuse! (ba-da-boom!)
Why, he was so ugly, he looked in a mirror once and he
broke! (Forget it. Tell the drummer to go back to
sleep.)
"Huh?" I answered.
"I don't know."
"What do you mean, you don't know. Either someone is
ugly or he's not!"
When my wife found out from the family grapevine (a Beaujolais-sized vineyard, really) who I was talking about, she couldn't believe it.
"How can you possibly say
he's not ugly?! He's the ugliest one in the whole
family!"
"But…," I sputtered, "…you just can't say that about
someone!"
"Why not? It's not his fault, just like it's not someone
else's merit to be good-looking. God got distracted and
let the clay sit too long, that's all." I was relieved
to know that when you're working with hydrous aluminum
silicates, even He is not perfect.
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