Ang Tigbuhat could imagine in his head how lawyers and legislators look at the Chief Justice Renato Corona impeachment trial. But his real perspective would have to be as a sculptor and writer, which is what he is. People in general will look at the case with an eye for what can be factually proven to be true. But in the end, they will realize you cannot get at the totality of it. At best, we can hope only to get enough of it so that judgement becomes possible and certain, at least to such an extent as to allow us to sleep well at night, our consciences clear and unworried that we had not allowed an injustice to occur in front of us and did nothing.
The bank documents indicate a disproportionate amount of money. And some of the prosecutors say it is only the tip of an iceberg. The defense suggests the money can be explained although Tigbuhat can’t imagine how. He was more inclined simply to measure it in terms of the artistic element of proportion.
Proportion in art has to do with scale. The view of any object can be reduced or enlarged without changing the relationships of its geometric elements, its dimensions, lines, angles and curves. This enlargement or reduction is described by its scale that might be described as a proportional relationship, one is to whatever number or fraction. Yet even beyond this, every artist has to develop the eye for proportion. It is inescapable as an element of realistic art. It is essential in judging the aesthetics, not just of the geometries of an art piece. It has more fundamental facets as well. How high should a cabinet be if it is this wide? While the question might be answered first by pragmatic concerns like ergonomics, structural strength and cost, at a certain point the good designer must also apply aesthetics. The cabinet produces the optimum aesthetic pleasure-potential when it is this high as it is this wide. Proportion.
How much money should a Chief Justice have in the bank before we lose enough trust in him and find his impeachment appropriate? Such a question is, of course, a legal question. And so it will be answered in the language of law. But since this is an impeachment court, then it must also be political. And because politics involves people, what they think and what they believe to be true, then it must also be an aesthetic question.
But how are aesthetic questions answered? Aesthetics is always a balance of the rational and the irrational. It is personal or subjective. But it is also universal in the sense that it aspires always for what is true for all. Is there enough sugar in the coffee? For people who do not desire any sugar at all, the question may be answered absolutely. “No sugar at all.” But then that would not be true for all. And so even the absolutist must have to consider asking himself if he is thinking this from a disinterested perspective. Then he must look at the problem not from his own personal perspective but from what he imagines to be how everyone looks at it. He must have to put some sugar in the coffee as most do and determine which amount of sugar “tastes” best. Which is too much and which is too little. He makes an aesthetic judgment based on the proportion of sugar to the amount of water and coffee.
The question “which amount tastes best” is hard to pin down with exactness. But we all know it is valid. We make aesthetic judgments all the time—sometimes without knowing it. This capacity to judge is important for human survival and must be presumed to have evolved continuously throughout the two million or so years of human development. Thus, we know that we can relate the beautiful to what is good, even as we know that ugly-looking things are often probably also bad for us. Murder and rape always ought to look and feel bad for us. But its ugliness is not subject to reason. The ugliness is immediate and unmediated. It is a priori. This is true, of course, always with essential exceptions. Aesthetic judgment is never an exact science.
But always, it is a good gauge of the human condition. In a society where money is more often than not the supreme indicator of a person’s consequent position in society, his allowance of political power, in a society divided as we are between the rich and powerful on the one hand and the general public on the other, the greater majority of whom are dirt-poor and politically powerless, how much money indeed is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court allowed to have?
The absolutists will of course say, “None that is ill-gotten, untaxed and secret.” But we all know that would be pretentious.
How many of those personalities we see daily at the trials on TV can exactly explain their own wealth? Probably none. And so it will be a question of aesthetics based on proportion.
How much is too little? How much is enough? How much is too much?