Abstract

There are many aesthetic cultures, and groups with different aesthetic cultures can come in contact with one another, sometimes resulting in conflict. An aesthetic injustice is a failure of policies in large scale social arrangements to manage the contact well and avoid conflict. This book articulates and defends the cosmopolitan theory of aesthetic injustice: a large scale social arrangement is aesthetically unjust when and only when it harms people in their capacities as aesthetic agents, thereby subverting interests in the value diversity and social autonomy of aesthetic cultures. It contrasts aesthetic injustice with related phenomena. It presents three cases studies of the aesthetic injustice in cultural appropriation, ideals of bodily beauty, and access to aesthetic resources for disabled people.