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Aesthetic Value: Beauty, Ugliness and Incoherence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Matthew Kieran
Matthew Kieran
Affiliation:
University of Leeds
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Extract

From Plato through Aquinas to Kant and beyond beauty has traditionally been considered the paradigmatic aesthetic quality. Thus, quite naturally following Socrates' strategy in The Meno, we are tempted to generalize from our analysis of the nature and value of beauty, a particular aesthetic value, to an account of aesthetic value generally. When we look at that which is beautiful, the object gives rise to a certain kind of pleasure within us. Thus aesthetic value is characterized in terms of that which affords us pleasure. Of course, the relation cannot be merely instrumental. Many activities may lead to consequent pleasures that we would not consider to be aesthetic in any way. For example, playing tennis, going swimming or finishing a book.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 72 , Issue 281 , July 1997 , pp. 383 - 399
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1997

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References

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2 See, for example, Kendall, Walton, ‘How Marvellous! Toward a Theory of Aesthetic Value’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 59, No. 3, pp. 499–510Google Scholar, Malcolm, Budd, Values of Art, (London: Penguin, 1995), pp. 1–44,Google Scholar and Jerrold, Levinson, ‘Pleasure, Aesthetic’ in David, Cooper (ed.), A Compatriot to Aesthetics (Oxford: Blackwells, 1992), pp. 330–335.Google Scholar

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19 This example was suggested to me by Roger White.

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21 Ibid., Section XVI, p. 121.

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