Aesthetic Hedonism Research Articles

Introduction: Symposium on Aesthetic Value

There is a resurgence of interest in aesthetic value. The models widely considered standard—sometimes lumped under the title aesthetic hedonism or aesthetic empiricism—are under challenge. A number of new models of this kind of value have been proposed, as well as a number of very distinct alternatives, especially ones that emphasize the inseparability of aesthetic value and social engagement. In light of the above, we have commissioned a symposium of eleven papers, gathering together proponents of these competing views in short presentations of their chief points and virtues. These papers both present several new ways of thinking about aesthetic value as well as demonstrate that aesthetic empiricism comes in different, highly sophisticated versions. The papers are arranged alphabetically based on authors name rather attempting to group them thematically. Regular readers of this Journal will immediately recognize that this symposium is unique in three ways. First, there is the topic itself. For many years, symposia have always been proposed by guest editors and have emphasized new, emerging, or neglected topics. This one was proposed and curated by the current editors and aims to highlight the current status of a perennial topic. Second, accomplishing this task meant inviting far more papers than in any past symposium. Third, the papers are unusually compact. The longest of them runs 1200 words.

Big Tent Aesthetics

Abstract Theoretical work on aesthetic value has taken off in the past 5 or 10 years. Since work on artistic value dates at least as far back as the first debates about the interaction between artistic and other values, aesthetic value presumably differs from artistic value. Unlike artistic value, aesthetic value is found in art, but also in nature, design, and intellectual material, even philosophy (Lopes 2022a). Indeed, continued use of “aesthetic” as a synonym for “artistic” has held up work on aesthetic value, as has the hegemony of aesthetic hedonism (Van der Berg 2020). Now a raft of new ideas are on offer, and each has something going for it. We should not be too quick to winnow: we can build a tent that is big enough to house them all.

Harold and Maude, towards an Aesthetic Hedonism

Friedrich Nietzsche’s vision for humanity after he declares the death of God is both atheistic and aesthetic, the freedom to live life as it comes (amor fati). Therefore, we can call his existential vision aesthetic atheism. Maude, in the movie Harold and Maude, has a different take on living without God. Rather than take down Christianity, she tries to reform it. She lives freely but is not the intellectual free spirit that Nietzsche hoped would emerge after his proclamation. Rather, her way of existence we can call aesthetic hedonism. She understands that life is contingent, but she loves life for what it is and tries to free others, including animals, saints, and Harold, to experience the same. She does not urge the atheistic turn. I turn to Quentin Meillassoux’s notion of cosmological necessary contingency that, while he agrees with Nietzsche that God is at present inexistent, a necessary contingent cosmology cannot rule out the emergence of a divinity. He wonders just what kind of divinity might emerge. I argue that the divinity that might emerge, using Meillassoux’s term ‘divinology’, would depend upon the prevailing attitude, and consider this through both aesthetic atheism and aesthetic hedonism attitudes towards the world.

Two dogmas of aesthetic empiricism

AbstractAesthetic hedonism is the default theory of aesthetic value. Some of its critics share with it a pair of unquestioned assumptions, namely, that any theory of aesthetic value should make special appeal to its being the case that the canonical form of aesthetic evaluation is a state of pleasure and to its being the case that the canonical purpose of aesthetic acts is to access pleasure. This paper argues that there is reason to doubt both assumptions. Doubting both assumptions suggests a wider range of alternatives to aesthetic hedonism and primitivist inversions of aesthetic hedonism.

MORAL DETERIORATION OF ENGLISH SOCIETY IN VICTORIAN ERA AS SEEN IN OSCAR WILDE’S THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

Abstract
 This research aims to analyze the moral deterioration of English society in the Victorian Era in the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.Specifically, this research analyzes the reason for the moral deterioration of English society in the Victorian era and how moral deterioration affects British society. This study uses the theological theory by Ted Peter to analyze the selling soul to demons as the reason for moral deterioration, and the theory of Farhansyah to analyze hedonism as the effect of moral deterioration for British society in the Victorian era. This research finally underlined two major problems as the findings related to cause and effect in moral deterioration as seen on The Picture of Dorian Gray. The cause is selling souls to the demons. The effect of moral deterioration is hedonism. Related to hedonism, the writer only found two kinds of problems; ethical hedonism and aesthetic hedonism.

Beyond the Pleasure Principle: A Kantian Aesthetics of Autonomy

Aesthetic hedonism is the view that to be aesthetically good is to please. For most aesthetic hedonists, aesthetic normativity is hedonic normativity. This paper argues that Kant’s third <em>Critique</em> contains resources for a nonhedonic account of aesthetic normativity as sourced in autonomy as self-legislation. A case is made that the account is also Kant’s because it ties his aesthetics into a key theme of his larger philosophy.

Aesthetic Hedonism and the Capability Theory of Beauty

Aesthetic Hedonism and the Capability Theory of Beauty

Let’s be Liberal: An Alternative to Aesthetic Hedonism

Abstract Aesthetic value empiricism claims that the aesthetic value of an object is grounded in the value of a certain kind of experience of it. The most popular version of value empiricism, and a dominant view in contemporary philosophical aesthetics more generally, is aesthetic hedonism. Hedonism restricts the grounds of aesthetic value to the pleasure enjoyed in the right kind of experience. But hedonism does not enjoy any clear advantage over a more permissive alternative version of value empiricism. This alternative is aesthetic liberalism. On this view, an object’s aesthetic value is fully grounded in any value—not just the hedonic value—of a correct and complete experience of its sensory features. To demonstrate the advantages of liberalism over hedonism, I apply both views to analyze the aesthetic value of the Spring Temple Buddha and Anselm Kiefer’s Seraphim. I detail four advantages of liberalism over hedonism, and I conclude by defending liberalism from two kinds of objection.

TYPES OF HEDONISM ON THE MAIN CHARACTER SIR WALTER ELLIOT IN THE NOVEL PERSUASION BY JANE AUSTEN

Hedonism is a view of life in philosophy that seeks to avoid pain and make pleasure as the main goal in life. People who embrace hedonism tend to over-pursue pleasure. The hedonism lifestyle is mostly carried out by 18th century people especially the nobles who live in high culture. They are as close to hedonism as they are in the Persuasion novel by Jane Austen. Sir Walter Elliot the main character is a nobleman who did a lot of hedonism. Hedonism which is seen as too glorifying personal pleasure to ignore others. The purpose of this study was to find out the types of hedonism done by Sir Walter Elliot in Persuasion. This research uses descriptive qualitative method because all data are in the form of sentences. The researcher uses a philosophical approach and analyzes data using Weijers' theory as the main theory. The results of this study found that Sir Walter Elliot performed two types of hedonism, namely aesthetic hedonism and selfish hedonism.

Aesthetic hedonism and its critics

AbstractThis essay surveys the main objections to aesthetic hedonism, the view that aesthetic value is reducible to the value of aesthetic pleasure or experience. Hedonism is the dominant view of aesthetic value, but a spate of recent criticisms has drawn its accuracy into question. I introduce some distinctions crucial to the criticisms, before using the bulk of the essay to identify and review six major lines of argument that hedonism's critics have employed against it. Whether or not these arguments suffice to refute hedonism decisively, I argue that its privileged status, as the sole contender in aesthetic value theory, is detrimental to downstream research on aesthetic phenomena. The essay concludes with an overview of current work and promising avenues of inquiry into non‐hedonic alternatives.

ENTRE LUZES E ROMANTISMO: A ESTÉTICA HEDONISTA DO LICEU DAS DAMAS, DE GARRETT, E A REFLEXÃO SOBRE «POESIA» QUE PROPÕE

Este manuscrito de Almeida Garrett (pertencente à Biblioteca Geral da Universidade de Coimbra), começado cerca de 1822-32 e depois retomado (e que permanece, até hoje, sobejamente desconhecido), pretende posicionar as suas lições de poesia, escritas de um modo leve e cortês dado que se destinavam a uma “jovem Senhora”, no panorama estético e crítico português. O texto está bastante incompleto e, frequentemente, nos seus primeiros estádios de desenvolvimento, mas permite-nos documentar uma grande cisão cultural – aquela responsável pela expressão da subjetividade e subsequente reconhecimento da liberdade criativa, nascida a partir do sensualismo do Iluminismo, o qual foi favorável ao amanhecer Romântico. O prazer é repetidamente invocado pelo “mestre” como padrão de vida e deleite artístico; o seu grande cúmplice é o sentimento – uma energia individual que reúne a vivacidade dos sentidos, os discernimentos da razão e os movimentos de um coração delicado, virtuoso e espiritual. Daí brota o hedonismo estético, a consciência histórica, a relatividade crítica, a falta de “regras” e a tolerância do gosto revelada pelo Liceu das Damas.

Kant, Proust, and the Appeal of Beauty

Previous articleNext article No AccessArticleKant, Proust, and the Appeal of BeautyRichard MoranRichard Moran Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Critical Inquiry Volume 38, Number 2Winter 2012 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/662744 Views: 327Total views on this site Citations: 13Citations are reported from Crossref © 2012 by The University of Chicago. 0093-1896/12/3802-0010$10.00. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Lucas Scripter Meaning and beauty, Ratio 38 (Oct 2022).https://doi.org/10.1111/rati.12356Keren Gorodeisky, Eric Marcus Aesthetic knowledge, Philosophical Studies 179, no.88 (Jan 2022): 2507–2535.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-021-01775-1Nick Riggle Toward a Communitarian Theory of Aesthetic Value, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 80, no.11 (Oct 2021): 16–30.https://doi.org/10.1093/jaac/kpab060James Shelley Aesthetic Acquaintance, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 38 (Jan 2022).https://doi.org/10.1111/papq.12402Alex King Reasons, normativity, and value in aesthetics, Philosophy Compass 17, no.11 (Dec 2021).https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12807John Dyck There Are No Purely Aesthetic Obligations, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 102, no.44 (Feb 2021): 592–612.https://doi.org/10.1111/papq.12346Samantha Matherne Aesthetic Autonomy and Norms of Exposure, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 102, no.44 (Jul 2021): 686–711.https://doi.org/10.1111/papq.12375Andrea Sisti, Negaar Aryan, Payam Sadeghi What is Beauty?, Aesthetic Plastic Surgery 45, no.55 (May 2021): 2163–2176.https://doi.org/10.1007/s00266-021-02288-2Antonia Peacocke Let’s be Liberal: An Alternative to Aesthetic Hedonism, The British Journal of Aesthetics 61, no.22 (Dec 2020): 163–183.https://doi.org/10.1093/aesthj/ayaa033Daniel Whiting Aesthetic Reasons and the Demands They (Do Not) Make, The Philosophical Quarterly 71, no.22 (Jun 2020): 407–427.https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqaa045Robbie Kubala Aesthetic obligations, Philosophy Compass 15, no.1212 (Oct 2020).https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12712Julianne Chung The Oneness Hypothesis and Aesthetic Obligation, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 99, no.22 (Sep 2019): 501–507.https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.12630Robbie Kubala Love and Transience in Proust, Philosophy 91, no.44 (Jun 2016): 541–557.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0031819116000267

Vernon Lee: New Woman?

This article tracks the evolution of the sexual and aesthetic politics of the late-Victorian critic, aesthetician and Renaissance historiographer Vernon Lee (Violet Paget) in response to the controversies generated by "the Aesthetic Movement" at the fin de siècle. Despite her own practice of same-sex love, Lee's first work of Renaissance historiography, Euphorion (1884), strikingly indicts the celebration of aesthetic hedonism, male homosociality, and aesthetic individualism which formed the conceptual underpinning to Walter Pater's seminal text of impressionist historiography, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (1873). In this, Lee can be seen to anticipate the sanitising tenor of the New Woman's response to the Aesthetic Movement a decade later. The sequel to Euphorion, Renaissance Fancies and Studies (1895), was published in the shadow of the Wilde trials and unexpectedly defers from participating in that backlash to radical literary culture marking both newspaper editorials and New Woman publications. Instead, a dextrous co-opting of New Woman discourse can be adduced from Lee's assertion that the radical philosophies of the Decadents would be harnessed for the purposes of social good. As this article reveals, Lee's brave insistence on a "queer comradeship" with the literary avant-garde at this pivotal moment in finde-siècle culture signals a distinct emboldening of her sexual politics.

Sir Philip Sidney's Dilemma: on The Ethical Function of Narrative Art

Poetry, Horace famously declared, should either please or instruct.' Despite two unlikely features, this statement is the foremost classical precedent for humanist aesthetics, which espouses an ethical function of art.2 First, although it is clear from other passages in The Art of Poetry that Horace had moral instruction specifically in mind, this dictum points in a very general way toward aesthetic cognitivism, the view that what is primarily valuable in art is the knowledge we gain from it.3 Not all humanists are cognitivists, since art's ethical function might not be to provide knowledge; conversely, one might think that the knowledge art provides has little to do with ethics. Hence, it is worth asking why Horace (and so many other cognitivists4) should seize on moral knowledge as the bounty of poetry, fiction, or the theater. There is a second respect in which Horace's injunction is an unlikely humanist slogan. By offering instruction and pleasure as disjunctive ends of poetry, he offends against the strictest forms of both cognitivism and its antithesis, aesthetic hedonism, the view that art's value is simply the pleasure it provides. Both theories would give precedence to one half of the disjunction or the other. True, Horace says it is the poet who "mingles the useful with the sweet [who] carries the day by charming his reader and at the same time instructing him."5 Yet, even here, his rationale is decidedly crass: this is the work, he says, to enrich its publisher and ensure its author's fame. Horace conspicuously lacks the earnestness of both ideological critics and the champions of 'Art for Art's Sake"loosely speaking, moralists and formalists. Although Horace's worldly cynicism can be refreshing, it is frustrating that he is so unconcerned to explain how the useful and the sweet can be truly mingled in poetry. His explicit account sounds simply additive, and hence is prone to the most pervasive complaint leveled against humanism: that it is alienated from aesthetic value. This complaint is exacerbated by the traditional humanist metaphor for art, the sugarcoated pill, in which art's pleasure merely serves to make its moral medicine go down easier. In fact, we go to the theater not primarily for instruction, but for delight-though, to be sure, its delights are various, and not all are aptly deemed pleasure. Furthermore, fables and morality plays, the traditional paradigms of morally instructive fiction, are seldom among the works we care most about, or find most profound. Hence it is crucial to recognize that art can serve an ethical function without its manifesting didactic intentions and moralistic purposes. One way to put this point is to say that we can learn from fiction without thereby being taught by it. Yet Horace's few examples adhere to a straightforward propositional model, on which poetry instructs by teaching a prosaic moral lesson. Although propositional knowledge is most familiar, philosophers have recognized other varieties: know-how and knowledge-of; knowledge by acquaintance, and phenomenological knowledge. Whichever variety the cognitivist chooses, though, a similar epistemological worry will arise. If we do come to believe something from reading a story, what could justify this belief? For instance, phenomenological knowledge-about "what it is like" to F-might well seem especially amenable to the vehicle of fiction. Yet here too there is ample room for skepticism. You might think you have learned what love is like from reading about it in books, and yet be tragically misled. (Consider Madame Bo-

Sir Philip Sidney's Dilemma: On the Ethical Function of Narrative Art

Poetry, Horace famously declared, should either please or instruct.' Despite two unlikely features, this statement is the foremost classical precedent for humanist aesthetics, which espouses an ethical function of art.2 First, although it is clear from other passages in The Art of Poetry that Horace had moral instruction specifically in mind, this dictum points in a very general way toward aesthetic cognitivism, the view that is primarily valuable in art is the knowledge we gain from it.3 Not all humanists are cognitivists, since art's ethical function might not be to provide knowledge; conversely, one might think that the knowledge art provides has little to do with ethics. Hence, it is worth asking why Horace (and so many other cognitivists4) should seize on moral knowledge as the bounty of poetry, fiction, or the theater. There is a second respect in which Horace's injunction is an unlikely humanist slogan. By offering instruction and pleasure as disjunctive ends of poetry, he offends against the strictest forms of both cognitivism and its antithesis, aesthetic hedonism, the view that art's value is simply the pleasure it provides. Both theories would give precedence to one half of the disjunction or the other. True, Horace says it is the poet who mingles the useful with the sweet [who] carries the day by charming his reader and at the same time instructing him.5 Yet, even here, his rationale is decidedly crass: this is the work, he says, to enrich its publisher and ensure its author's fame. Horace conspicuously lacks the earnestness of both ideological critics and the champions of 'Art for Art's Sakeloosely speaking, moralists and formalists. Although Horace's worldly cynicism can be refreshing, it is frustrating that he is so unconcerned to explain how the useful and the sweet can be truly mingled in poetry. His explicit account sounds simply additive, and hence is prone to the most pervasive complaint leveled against humanism: that it is alienated from aesthetic value. This complaint is exacerbated by the traditional humanist metaphor for art, the sugarcoated pill, in which art's pleasure merely serves to make its moral medicine go down easier. In fact, we go to the theater not primarily for instruction, but for delight-though, to be sure, its delights are various, and not all are aptly deemed pleasure. Furthermore, fables and morality plays, the traditional paradigms of morally instructive fiction, are seldom among the works we care most about, or find most profound. Hence it is crucial to recognize that art can serve an ethical function without its manifesting didactic intentions and moralistic purposes. One way to put this point is to say that we can learn from fiction without thereby being taught by it. Yet Horace's few examples adhere to a straightforward propositional model, on which poetry instructs by teaching a prosaic moral lesson. Although propositional knowledge is most familiar, philosophers have recognized other varieties: know-how and knowledge-of; knowledge by acquaintance, and phenomenological knowledge. Whichever variety the cognitivist chooses, though, a similar epistemological worry will arise. If we do come to believe something from reading a story, could justify this belief? For instance, phenomenological knowledge-about what it is to F-might well seem especially amenable to the vehicle of fiction. Yet here too there is ample room for skepticism. You might think you have learned love is like from reading about it in books, and yet be tragically misled. (Consider Madame Bo-

The aesthetic as the science of expression and of the linguistic in general

Acknowledgments Translator's foreword Preface 1. Intuition and expression 2. Intuition and art 3. Art and philosophy 4. Historicism and intellectualism in the aesthetic 5. critique of analogous errors in history and logic 6. Theoretical activity and practical activity 7. The analogy between the theoretical and the practical 8. The exclusion of other forms of the spirit 9. That expression cannot be divided into modes or levels: the critique of rhetoric 10. Aesthetic feelings and the distinction between the beautiful and the ugly 11. Critique of aesthetic hedonism 12. The aesthetic of 'That which attracts liking' and the pseudo-aesthetic concepts 13. Physical beauty and the nature of art 14. Errors arising from the confusion between the physical and the aesthetic 15. The activity of externalisation: the technique and the theory of the arts 16. Taste and the reproduction of art 17. The history of art and literature 18. Conclusion: identity of linguistics and the aesthetic Index.