Aesthetic and Ethical Beauty of the City

"Those who govern must care deeply about

the beauty of the city,

for the delight and joy of visitors,

for the honor, prosperity, and growth

of the city and its citizens."

(Sienese Constitution, 1309)

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Imagine entering an art gallery with other people; after walking through and observing the exhibited works, each of you is given a sheet of paper and a pen and asked to write down the titles of the pieces you consider “beautiful,” followed by a short comment justifying your choice. Most likely, at least one title will appear on one list but not on another, and the justifications will be quite different: nihil sub sole novum, since “beautiful” is a term that resists easy definitions and lacks a universally valid method of application. Now imagine that the other people come from different cultures; to complicate matters further, the concept of beauty is culturally connoted: for example, the Japanese word utsukushii (美しい) conveys an idea of beauty that differs from what is conveyed by the word beautiful—despite the fact that the latter is often used as its English translation.

A Japanese viewer might not consider utsukushii a work that most English-speaking viewers would deem beautiful.

Finally, imagine that the others come from the Middle Ages, specifically from the period in which the Sienese Constitution quoted above was written: a mental experiment, absurd from a historical standpoint—there being no real possibility that a person from the Middle Ages could walk into a 21st-century art gallery (though advances in artificial intelligence may invalidate this last remark). Nevertheless, it's a logical possibility worth considering for the purposes of our discussion. The concept of beauty is not only culturally but also historically connoted: when someone today says “beautiful,” they are using a term that opens up a much broader and more varied range of meanings than it did for our medieval ancestors. This happens because words evolve over time, acquiring new meanings and referring to things they did not previously refer to.

Despite the absence of a universally valid method of application, and despite its cultural and historical connotations, we can nonetheless identify—at least within the Western tradition—a common thread that links the various shades of meaning the word beauty has taken on, without betraying its semantic richness. And what better framework than that of classical Greek culture?

In ancient Greece, the concept of beauty, kalòn (καλόν), was tied to the notion of harmony, harmonìā (ἁρμονία), a term sharing the same root as the verb armozein (ἁρμόζειν), meaning “to fit together, to connect, to agree.” This root, ar, is also found in another significant Greek word, arithmós (ἀριθμός, number), from which we derive the word arithmetic. It alludes to a relation of forces that bring together, connect, and reconcile a series of elements, forming the basis of a proportioned whole—like a melody (or, indeed, harmony) or a poetic composition.

It is important to emphasize that the forces enabling a harmonious relationship are often opposing forces. It is no coincidence that in Hesiod’s Theogony, the goddess Harmonia is born of Aphrodite, the goddess of Love, and Ares, the god of War—love and war being two (apparently) antithetical forces. Thus, beauty manifests wherever there is harmony, proportion, and balance, understood as the outcomes of dynamic relationships among contrasting elements.

Moreover, beauty does not pertain solely to the realm of art: beautiful may be a person who has achieved inner harmony and balance, integrating body and mind in a way that fosters a healthy lifestyle—the Greek word for which is dìaita (δίαιτα), from which we derive the term “diet.” A city too can be beautiful—not only artistically, but also institutionally. A city is beautiful if it is governed according to harmony and balance, and if its citizens, taking as their model the kalòs kai agathòs (καλὸς καὶ ἀγαθός)—literally “beautiful and virtuous”—take care of themselves, of others, and of the environment that surrounds them.

The concept of epiméleia heautoù (ἐπιμέλεια ἑαυτοῦ), or care of the self, is a key notion in classical Greece. Young people destined to become future citizens would undergo an educational path known as paideía (παιδεία), through which they learned to care for themselves; this path also included education in beauty, so that the young could recognize, appreciate, and preserve it.

It is no coincidence that Pericles, the Athenian statesman, in his funeral oration for the fallen of the first year of the Peloponnesian War, recalled how the Athenians “love beauty with moderation and pursue philosophy without fear” (Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War). Moreover, the way this educational path was conceived promoted a strong sense of belonging to one’s community and land: the future citizen was taught that beauty was not a goal to be achieved solely for oneself, but also for the city and the homeland. Harmony, proportion, and balance were meant to be distinctive traits not only of the individual, but also of the collective and of the land that hosted them—called mētēr (μήτηρ), “mother,” by the Greeks—on whose behalf they were willing to sacrifice their lives.

This is testified in fragment 10 of Tyrtaeus, which says: “It is beautiful to die, falling in the front line, for a valiant man, while he fights for his fatherland.” It is also testified in the choice of Aeschylus—one of the greatest tragedians of ancient Greece—not to mention his fame as a playwright on his epitaph, but rather the fact that, at barely twenty years old, he had fought at Marathon against the Persians for the freedom of his fellow citizens and his homeland.

Alongside harmonìā, epiméleia heautoù, and paideía, there is another term we must mention in connection with the concept of kalòn: téchne (τέχνη). Today we usually translate téchne as “art,” but in ancient times it denoted an individual’s skill in mastering a set of rules aimed at accomplishing an activity—whether artisanal or intellectual.

The acquisition of téchne required years of training. Talent alone was not enough—an individual had to show perseverance and determination to cultivate it properly. Artistic practices in the strict sense, such as sculpture, music, and dramatic art—what we now call the fine arts—also fell under the domain of téchne. But téchne was not considered beautiful merely for aesthetic reasons, as we might wrongly assume today. Through art, then as now, individuals could externalize and express themselves in order to better understand who they were and imprint their mark on the form of things so they could recognize themselves in them—to put it in Hegelian terms.

It is this cognitive value of téchne that deserves our attention and that is intimately connected to the concept of kalòn.

Now, the Greek conception of beauty—of which this brief introduction is but a poor synopsis—forms the foundation of the idea of beauty we have today and that our ancestors had in 1309. The words of the Sienese Constitution exemplify a moment of artistic and architectural splendor in the city of Siena. It was during the decades surrounding the 14th century that most of the monuments now symbolic of the city were built, such as the Palazzo Pubblico and the Torre del Mangia.

But why was (and is) it important for a ruler to care about the beauty of the city—beauty understood in the broad sense we have considered here? Because the beauty of the city—whether the Greek polis, the medieval citadel, or the modern metropolis—has always been, is, and will be the result of citizens collaborating in the care and enhancement of their surroundings. And such care and enhancement are only possible if the citizens first take care of themselves and of one another.

Through education, we are given the tools to navigate the world with respect for living beings, for the land we walk on, for the air we breathe, and for the buildings that shelter us. No city is born beautiful—and even if we assumed that a city could be born beautiful, we would still face the problem of preserving that beauty.

A city becomes beautiful when its citizens know how to recognize the potential value of the place they live in, and once that value has been uncovered and realized, they learn to preserve it in its authenticity—so that the city may not only become, but also remain beautiful. In other words, the ruler must care about the beauty of the city because, by cultivating and preserving the beauty of the city, they are also cultivating and preserving the “beauty” of the citizens who inhabit it.

At this point, we can identify two dimensions of the concept of beauty: aesthetic beauty and ethical beauty. Aesthetic beauty pertains to the fine arts and the pleasures of the senses; it is the object of the judgment of taste. Ethical beauty concerns the fulfillment of the duties we have as human beings and as citizens; it is the object of political and moral judgment.

These two dimensions are inseparable, even though they may be theoretically distinguished—as will be done in this discussion.

Aesthetic beauty, as we have said, concerns the fine arts and the pleasure of the senses. When we walk through a city, we receive various perceptual stimuli (sight, smell, taste, hearing, touch), which often become the object of our judgment of taste and help shape—whether positively or negatively—our idea of that city. Each of us may be struck by the sight of a monument, a museum, a square, a street, a beach, the sea, or the mountains of the city we are visiting or living in; but we may also be struck by its sounds, its smells, its flavors, or its textures.

To make a city livable for its citizens and attractive for tourists, the ruler must take aesthetic beauty into account and must encourage all citizens—including themselves—to care for it.

Ethical beauty is divided into political and religious beauty. By religious beauty, I do not mean beauty tied to a specific religion—be it Catholicism, Buddhism, or any other—but rather beauty that derives from conscientiousness. As many readers will know, the word religion comes from the Latin religio (scrupulousness, conscientiousness), which may itself derive either from the verb relegere (to gather, to reread) or from religare (to bind, to tie).

Let us start with religious beauty: the conscientiousness from which it stems is the capacity to act according to one’s conscience. This is connected both to the meaning of relegere, which can imply the gathering of experiences that help us become more aware of the world around us, and to religare, the idea of being bound to someone or something. In particular, human beings have bonds and duties toward other people, toward animals, and toward the environment.

Even though the term duty is politically charged, these duties—which from now on I will call moral—go beyond the duties I will later call political. They are duties we fulfill because we first recognize the inalienability of certain human rights—rights that were written down in 1948 but had been imprinted in the minds of many long before.

That these moral rights extend beyond the political sphere does not mean they cannot serve as models for political duties (as seen in our Constitution, where political duties seek to align with moral ones). But there are cases—take Nazism, for example—where moral and political duties diverge sharply. The existence of such cases is one reason why the complete identification of the two kinds of duties must be ruled out.

The moral duties that pertain to religious beauty can be summed up by Kant’s categorical imperative:

“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”

In other words: act in a way that respects both your own person and others, as well as everything around you—for only then can you live well and in harmony with others

And what about political duty? What does it consist of?

Political duties define political beauty. They are the duties that every citizen must fulfill as a member of a community that exists thanks to the respect for a system of laws. Political beauty is achieved when the majority of citizens respect the laws and carry out their political duties as prescribed by those laws.

Already in ancient Greece, nómos (νόμος), the written law, was considered the true sovereign of the poleis. When Xerxes—the Great King of Persia—asked the Spartan Demaratus what compelled the Greeks to resist the Persians, given that the Greeks did not have someone like him to force them into action, Demaratus replied that the Great King was mistaken: the Greeks did have a sovereign—and that sovereign was the Law. They fought for it.

Even then, there was an understanding that only through a legal system—and the voluntary adherence to it by citizens—could freedom exist. Moreover, political beauty is achievable only when the legal system is widely accepted and respected by most, if not all, citizens sua sponte—that is, of their own free will, not out of coercion.

However, the political beauty of ancient Greece differs from that of the Middle Ages, and both differ from that of the present day. The difference lies in the extent to which ethical beauty—in both its political and religious aspects—is accessible.

In ancient Greece and Rome, there was only a vague idea of what this work refers to as “religious beauty.” Hundreds of thousands of people—think of those classified as slaves and treated like property—could not enjoy all or most of the rights of citizens, because they did not bear the same duties. Thus, they did not partake in the political and religious beauty of the cities they lived in.

Historically, the conditions for the enjoyment of political and religious beauty by everyone only emerged after the advent of Christianity. Jesus Christ was the first to affirm that every human being is free and equal before a (divine) law. This does not mean that every individual is identical to others, but that the law must apply equally to all human beings. The religious beauty we speak of today—epitomized in Kant’s categorical imperative—was not possible before Christ, because there was no notion that every human being, regardless of social status, has the right to be “equally unequal” to others—to borrow another Hegelian phrase.

One may love Christianity or not, but from a philosophical point of view, Christianity provided fertile ground for the development of the political thought underlying most European systems—and the Italian one in particular. Indeed, Article 2 of the Italian Constitution reads:

“The Republic recognizes and guarantees the inviolable rights of the person, both as an individual and in the social groups where human personality is expressed, and requires the fulfillment of the unalterable duties of political, economic, and social solidarity.”

In the Middle Ages, more people could aspire to the enjoyment of political and religious beauty, but it was still a narrow group—often overlapping with those who upheld the Christian faith. Today, however, everyone can (and should) aspire to the enjoyment of ethical beauty. Moreover, in the contemporary state, political beauty seeks to walk in step with religious beauty.

That it seeks to do so doesn’t mean it always succeeds—and this is because the realization of religious beauty through the full exercise of both political and moral duties by each citizen represents an ideal situation. It is something a city must always strive for, but never fully attain.

We can therefore summarize contemporary ethical beauty as the effort of political beauty to identify with religious beauty.

The idea is quite simple, and the arguments presented here do not do full justice to the complexity of the centuries-old debate on the encounter—and clash—between ethics and politics. But it is also true that this debate advances more through what we do than through what we say.

It is now time to draw the threads together. We have said that the concept of beauty encompasses ideas of harmony, proportion, care of the self, education, and art. We have identified two types of beauty: aesthetic and ethical. Aesthetic beauty involves sensory pleasure and is the object of the judgment of taste. Ethical beauty involves the fulfillment of the duties we bear—first as human beings, and second as citizens—and is the object of political and moral judgment.

The concept of beauty found in the text of the 1309 Sienese Constitution should be understood in light of all these meanings. Yet it lacks one universal component that today is indispensable and must not be forgotten: every human being is the bearer of an inestimable value—not in their capacity as a citizen, but as a person. This value must be protected, and rulers—as well as all participants in a state’s political life—cannot and must not neglect it in the exercise of their duties.

Because if a ruler wants the city to be “beautiful,” they must ensure that its citizens, educated in both political and ethical beauty, commit themselves to cultivating and preserving these as virtues—virtues grounded in respect for both written and unwritten laws.

And how can a ruler encourage citizens to cultivate and preserve beauty in both of its dimensions?

That answer—like the very concept of beauty—resists easy definition.

Yet perhaps it can begin with setting an example.

Aesthetic and Ethical Beauty of the City