Lookism is a topic that philosophers have been eerily silent about. Some notable exceptions notwithstanding, it seems that some philosophers either have personal looks as a blind spot in their thinking or simply do not deem it a relevant topic for systematic philosophical inquiry. But given that race and gender receive so much attention in social philosophy, it is an increasingly notable omission that looks are so underappreciated, given that looks, like race and gender, arguably determine one’s social life in significant ways. In this relatively sparse landscape, Andrew Mason has now published what is one of the first monograph-length philosophical reflections on looks and lookism. Part 1 deals with the nature of what makes discrimination wrong, part 2 considers three different contexts of lookism, and part 3 addresses possible strategies for ameliorating the negative societal effects of lookism.
Part 1 espouses Mason’s preferred (meta)ethical framework of what makes something...
