Being for Beauty

Aesthetic Agency and Value

Bibliographic Data

ID4158089
AuthorsAlex King (0000-0001-6323-0872, University at Buffalo, SUNY, corresponding author)
Year2019
Publication date2019-04-24
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe British Journal of Aesthetics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0007-0904 • E-ISSN: 1468-2842
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/aesthj/ayz014
OpenAlexW2940798580
LanguageEN
Citations received53

This book begins with what Dominic McIver Lopes calls (following Mary Mothersill) the primitive question of aesthetics: ‘What is the place of aesthetic value in the good life?’ (3). He breaks this down into two further questions. The aesthetic question asks what makes a value an aesthetic value. The normative question asks about the relationship between aesthetic value and aesthetic normativity. The primary aim of the book is to answer the normative question and it largely sets aside the aesthetic question. By aesthetic value, Lopes means aesthetic properties like vibrancy or elegance as well as tackiness or clunkiness. Aesthetic normativity, on the other hand, refers to the realm of aesthetic reasons. So Lopes, in answering the normative question, assumes that there is aesthetic value, then proceeds to ask whether and how that value generates reasons—in other words, whether and how it has any claim on us. A secondary aim of the book is to challenge the dominance of hedonism (and response-dependence theories more generally) as an account of aesthetic normativity. This view has to date enjoyed a certain privilege as the largely uncontested answer to the normative question, maintaining that we should engage with things that are aesthetically valuable simply because doing so brings us pleasure, or would do so under idealized circumstances. By challenging hedonism and focusing on other ways to answer the normative question, Lopes aims to open up new spaces for future research in aesthetics. He aims to set a new course centered on reasons and acts rather than pleasure and experience. Although Lopes presents reasons to reject hedonism, the book’s overarching methodology consists of an inference to the best explanation argument. Thus the full case against hedonism also depends on the strength of his rival account of aesthetic normativity, which he dubs the network theory. The development and defence of this theory is the core of this book

Aesthetic value · Aesthetics · Agency (philosophy · Beauty · Elegance · Epistemology · Hedonism · Normative · Pleasure · Sociology · Value (mathematics · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Ethics, Aesthetics, and Art · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Psychology