On The Nature Of Beauty.
Eric Cantona might disagree, but I reckon the closest football has come to philosophy was when Thierry Henry asked: “What is va-va-voom?”
Last week, I found myself pondering a similarly profound question.
Part of my new role at Bala is to seek new outlets for our fair trade sports balls. Recently, I came across a shop whose buying policy was simple: “We only stock beautiful things.”
At first, that seemed like a problem. Footballs and rugby balls may be practical, well-designed and full of meaning. 'Cool' maybe, but they are not usually described as beautiful.
Then I began to wonder: what do we actually mean by beauty?
Humans have a natural urge for balance. In architecture, symmetry gives us a sense of order: each side answers the other, the eye is drawn towards the centre, and the whole structure feels settled. Music works in much the same way. A melody can move away from its home key and create tension, but we instinctively wait for it to return. When it does, the tension lifts and everything falls back into place.
Perhaps beauty is partly our response to that moment of balance: the feeling that the different parts belong together and the whole has found its proper shape.
“Beautiful things … hold steadily visible the manifest good of equality and balance.”
The writer Elaine Scarry sees a connection between beauty and justice. The balance and symmetry we recognise as beautiful have something in common with fairness: each side is given its proper weight, and no part overwhelms the rest.
Even the word *fair* carries both meanings. It can describe something pleasing to look at, but it can also describe a situation in which people are treated justly.
Perhaps that is more than a coincidence. Beauty and fairness may both answer the same natural desire: for balance, for harmony and for things to stand in the right relationship to one another.
That relationship matters when we consider how an object was made. A product may look perfectly balanced on the outside while hiding a deeply unbalanced relationship beneath its surface. One person enjoys the finished object, while another bears an unfair share of the cost.
A sports ball is already designed around balance. Its panels are joined together to create a single, rounded whole, holding the pressure of the air inside. But its value lies in more than its shape.
A ball connects people.
It moves from player to player. It turns individuals into teams and brings communities together around a shared set of rules. At their best, ball sports hold cooperation, creativity and competition in balance.
The ball also connects the player to the maker.
When that relationship is unfair, something remains unresolved. The game may celebrate respect and fair play on the pitch while the people making its equipment are denied those same values elsewhere.
There is a tension between what the ball represents and how it came into existence.
Fair trade helps to resolve that tension.
It tries to bring the values of the game into better alignment with the way its equipment is made. Respect for the player is joined by respect for the maker. Enjoyment here is not bought through unfairness somewhere else.
Perhaps, then, a ball really can be beautiful.
Not because it belongs in a gallery, or because its surface is perfectly decorated, but because of what it brings together: maker and player, competition and cooperation, individual skill and shared purpose.
Perhaps beauty is what we recognise when form, purpose and story all ring true together.
Perhaps fairness is beauty.