The nature of ugliness
"Socrates belonged, in his origins, to the lowest orders: Socrates was rabble. One knows, one sees for oneself, how ugly he was. But ugliness, an objection in itself, is among the Greeks almost a refutation. Was Socrates a Greek at all? Ugliness is frequently enough the sign of a thwarted development, a development retarded by interbreeding. Otherwise it appears as a development in decline. Anthropologists among criminologists tell us the typical criminal is ugly: monstrum in fronte, monstrum in animo. But the criminal is a dècadent. Was Socrates a typical criminal? — At least that famous physiognomist's opinion which Socrates' friends found so objectionable would not contradict this idea. A foreigner passing through Athens who knew how to read faces told Socrates to his face that he was a monstrum — that he contained within him every kind of foul vice and lust. And Socrates answered merely: 'You know me, sir!'"
“Nothing is beautiful, except man alone: all aesthetics rests upon this naïveté, which is its first truth. Let us immediately add the second: nothing is ugly except the degenerating man — and with this the realm of aesthetic judgment is circumscribed. Physiologically, everything ugly weakens and saddens man. It reminds him of decay, danger, impotence; it actually deprives him of strength. One can measure the effect of the ugly with a dynamometer. Wherever man is depressed at all, he senses the proximity of something "ugly." His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride — all fall with the ugly and rise with the beautiful. In both cases we draw an inference: the premises for it are piled up in the greatest abundance in instinct. The ugly is understood as a sign and symptom of degeneration: whatever reminds us in the least of degeneration causes in us the judgment of "ugly." Every suggestion of exhaustion, of heaviness, of age, of weariness; every kind of lack of freedom, such as cramps, such as paralysis; and above all, the smell, the color, the form of dissolution, of decomposition — even in the ultimate attenuation into a symbol — all evoke the same reaction, the value judgment, "ugly." A hatred is aroused — but whom does man hate then? There is no doubt: the decline of his type. Here he hates out of the deepest instinct of the species; in this hatred there is a shudder, caution, depth, farsightedness — it is the deepest hatred there is. It is because of this that art is deep.”
Ugliness is the antithesis of beauty. Beauty is a subjective property that affirms the quality of an environment. At some point in the history of life, beings that could identify beauty, and subsequently its opposite — ugliness, were allowed to grow whereas beings lacking in good taste had to succumb.
If something appears as beautiful it compels a certain respect from the beholder. It demands a peaceful appropriation, as well as to be protected and preserved. Likewise, something ugly conjures destructive intent from the subject.
What is beautiful is entirely dependent on the environment in which a subject operates. Even people with "bad" taste can experience beauty. However, if the "beautiful" object does not ultimately affirm life, the subject is a décadent and must serve as a martyr for a true taste.
Ugliness must suffer scorn in one way or another, most commonly in the form of pity or disgust. And this scorn in turn often transforms the ugly animal into a dècadent — a criminal, intent on upheaving the environment to instead affirm themselves.
The ugly animal has two main paths to choose from. It may walk towards dècadence to force the rest of creation to overcome it. Or it may cherish a beauty unattainable to itself, and thus participate in a more honorable form of altruism. But which one is more effective?