Meta-Ethics and Meta-Aesthetics

Abstract

Metaethics is a live and flourishing subdiscipline of ethics, and meta-aesthetics flourishes in aesthetics, but only infrequently under that title. Still, in the long history of aesthetics and the philosophy of art, a great many thinkers have delved into meta-aesthetic issues. Given their different histories and focal points, metaethics and meta-aesthetics have gone in somewhat different directions. As a result, both would benefit from more contemporary cross-pollination. This chapter investigates four epicenters of debate that should be of importance to anyone working in meta-aesthetics. It will also provisionally defend realism, partly to illustrate how the arguments work, but partly to show that aesthetic realism isn’t the nonstarter it is sometimes taken to be.