I. Introduction: The Aesthetic Judgment Within*¹

“The soul is not a unity. It is a field of tensions — of seeing, feeling, and wanting.
The work of judgment is not to conquer these parts, but to bring them into resonance.”
— Jedi Go’Abi, Teachings from the Outer Rim

Good siblings on the Way…

From the beginning of this course, we’ve treated aesthetics not as decoration, but as a practice of seeing — and of showing up to what is seen. We’ve explored beauty as fragile, cultural, political, even resistant. But in this module, our attention turns inward. What do our responses to art reveal about how we think, how we feel, and what we want?

What does it mean to judge?

The Star Wars universe, especially as envisioned in George Lucas’s original six films, gives us more than myth and motion. It offers a visual grammar for judgment. Through color, costume, light, and texture, Lucas crafts an aesthetic field where the tension between reason, emotion, and desire is constantly in play. Each faction, each character, each setting expresses not only a story, but a philosophy — one that works on the viewer long before any words are spoken.

Drawing from phenomenology, Daoist aesthetics, and visual culture, this essay explores how Lucas uses the seen world to shape moral insight. With Camille Paglia’s interpretive lens at our side, we’ll consider not just what we see — but what kind of seer we are becoming.

II. The Empire’s Aesthetic of Reason-As-Control

From the first frame of A New Hope, the Empire declares itself not only with force, but with form. Uniforms in cold grays and blacks, officers standing rigid in sterile halls, walls illuminated by harsh, directionless light — we are meant to feel the absence of life.

Lucas famously modeled the Empire’s aesthetic on Nazi Germany, and the echoes are exacting: the tailored lines, the abstraction of geometry, the vastness without intimacy. The Death Star — a sphere of symmetry with no visible texture — is pure rationalism weaponized. There are no curves, no asymmetries, no softness. Everything is planned, polished, and placed.

From a phenomenological standpoint, the Empire’s world rejects the body. We are not invited to touch, to feel, to be at home. There is no wind, no mess, no breath. Only abstraction.

This is reason without emotion or desire. What should have been a tool for discernment becomes an instrument of domination.

As Camille Paglia observes, Lucas builds these spaces as “modernist installations,” where meaning is embedded in the atmosphere itself. But here we reinterpret that brilliance not as aesthetic perfection, but as the horror of control. The Empire’s geometry is not just efficient — it is fascist. It invites submission, not reflection.

III. The Rebellion’s Aesthetic of Emotional Resonance

If the Empire is logic severed from life, the Rebellion is a return to the body, to the world, to feeling. The rebels wear loose garments in ochres, browns, faded greens. They build bases inside mountains and forests. Their ships are scratched, their clothes stained, their gestures unscripted.

The Rebellion’s aesthetic, in every detail, evokes what Daoist philosophy calls ziran — naturalness, spontaneity, dwelling in harmony with the way. The landscape is not mastered; it is inhabited. The body is not abstracted; it is present.

Phenomenologically, this world invites us in. We feel the textures of cloth, the softness of shadow, the irregularity of form. Light filters through leaves. Breath fogs in ice caverns. Nothing is clean. Everything is alive.

This aesthetic speaks the language of emotion — not sentimentality, but relationality. It is a world built for feeling-with. And through that, it teaches a different way of knowing. The Rebellion’s spaces are not ideal forms. They are felt truths.

IV. Luke in Black: The Discipline of Desire

Perhaps the most provocative moment in Lucas’s aesthetic storytelling comes in Return of the Jedi, when Luke Skywalker enters clad entirely in black. It’s a sharp break from his earlier appearances in desert tan and white. Now he resembles his father. The color of evil clings to him. We wonder: Has he already begun to fall?

Here, Lucas calls upon the visual grammar of desire. Black seduces. Black threatens. Black conceals.

But desire, in itself, is not the enemy. In Daoism, and in existential philosophy, desire becomes dangerous only when it becomes unseen — when it acts through us without our awareness. Luke’s black robe is not his fall. It is his passage through shadow.

The film’s quiet reveal — when Luke’s tunic opens in the final confrontation, showing white beneath — is not just costume design. It is an aesthetic argument: that true clarity does not come from purity, but from a desire disciplined by presence. Luke wins not by overpowering the Emperor, but by choosing not to strike. He sees his own darkness — and sets it down.

Lucas gives us no sermon. He gives us a garment. And that is enough.

V. Anakin’s Collapse: Desire Without Reason

In Attack of the Clones, Anakin Skywalker races across the desert to save his mother. He is dressed in black and brown. The lighting turns harsh, the wind brutal. The screen fills with slashing dust, sound and silence alternating in violent rhythm.

This scene is not subtle — and it shouldn’t be. Lucas is showing us what it means for desire to break free of reflection. Anakin doesn’t feel the world anymore. He rages through it. The light of emotion has gone dark. The compass of reason has been crushed. Only craving remains.

Paglia calls Revenge of the Sith the “greatest work of art in the last 30 years of American cinema.” She sees in it a visual Gesamtkunstwerk — a total work of art. But its power comes not from triumph, but from tragedy.

We are not simply watching a fall. We are witnessing how the aesthetic world around Anakin transforms with his psyche. The more he disconnects from others, the more sterile, metallic, and cruel his environments become.

This is not metaphor. This is cinematic phenomenology. The world reflects the soul.

VI. Conclusion: Judgment Begins With the Eye

If you found this an interesting take on Star Wars,
you can read Camile Paglia’s article. 

If Star Wars teaches us anything about aesthetics, it is this: visual form is never neutral. It reveals, it shapes, it trains.

To dwell in the Empire’s world is to be flattened. To live with the Rebellion is to be invited into touch. To follow Luke is to walk a path of becoming — where light and darkness are both acknowledged. And to fall with Anakin is to forget how to feel until the world itself becomes unbearable.

And this is where Module 4 returns: How do we judge what we see?

David Hume would say we must cultivate our taste through experience and reflection. Immanuel Kant would say we expect others to join us in our sense of beauty, even without rules. Susan Sontag would say we must learn to feel before we interpret.

George Lucas, in his own way, embodies them all.

He asks us to look again. To feel the coldness of steel. The softness of breath. The shimmer of black cloth. The tremble of restraint.

To see clearly in the world of Star Wars is not to know everything. It is to recognize that what we see — and how we respond — is a reflection of what we are becoming.

And that, dear seeker, is the beginning of aesthetic judgment.

1. This article is a short piece I used in my Aesthetics course. But it will be part of a larger project on Star Wars that I am working to publish in 2026. ↩︎