Hume and the Value of the Beautiful

Bibliographic Data

ID4158316
AuthorsJames Shelley (0000-0002-3517-5260, Auburn University, corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume51
Issue2
Pages213-222
Publication date2011-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe British Journal of Aesthetics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0007-0904 • E-ISSN: 1468-2842
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/aesthj/ayr007
OpenAlexW2330741348
LanguageEN
Citations received12

Hume is plausibly interpreted as asserting that an artwork is beautiful if and only if it pleases ideal critics. Jerrold Levinson maintains that Hume's commitment to this biconditional gives rise to a problem that occurs neither to Hume nor to his any of his interpreters—the problem of explaining why you should care what pleases ideal critics if you are not one yourself. I argue that this problem arises only if you hold an empiricist theory of aesthetic value—that is, a theory that reduces the aesthetic value of a work to the value of the experience it affords—as Levinson does. I argue that Levinson's own attempted solution to the problem cannot succeed. And I argue that the problem never arises for Hume because his commitment to the biconditional is not a commitment to an empiricist theory of aesthetic value, but to an empiricist theory of aesthetic evaluation

Empiricism · Epistemology · Ideal (ethics · Value (mathematics · Aesthetic Perception and Analysis · Mathematics · Philosophy

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