Saturday, October 10, 2015

Journey Toward Justice 29

This chapter is titled 'Justice and Beauty'. In this chapter Nick makes two important points. First, about the nature of beauty; second, connection between justice and beauty. Nick tells about a poet who spoke about his poetry. This poet says that at one point he scribbled a line of the poetry as ' a dog wagging its tail'; later the poet refined his poetry to say 'a dog swinging its tail'. Why so? Well, 'swinging' is better than using 'wagging'. Nick then makes a philosophical point that beauty does not always lie in the eye of the beholder; it is rather the other way round i.e because it is beautiful, it gives delight to the beholder. There is something called beautiful philosophy paper, beautiful sunset. beautiful music, beautiful painting etc. 

Given that there is something called beautiful, is it injustice if some people are forced to live in a condition where sensory delight that comes from experiencing beautiful object are not present? Yes, argues Nick. Humans are by nature a creature that requires certain amount of autonomy to be truly human. Similarly, human are by nature a creature that requires certain amount of beauty in one's life to be living a truly human life. Justice requires that 'aesthetic decency' is present in a human life. 

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