Schiller on Freedom and Aesthetic Value: Part II

Discussions of aesthetic reasons and normativity are becoming increasingly popular. This piece outlines six basic questions about aesthetic reasons, normativity, and value and discusses the space of possible answers to these questions. I divide the terrain into two groups of three questions each. First are questions about the shape of aesthetic reasons: what they favour, how strong they are, and where they come from. Second are relational questions about how aesthetic reasons fit into the wider normative landscape: whether they are distinctive, what their normative status is, and how they interact with each other and with non‐aesthetic reasons. This piece aims to provide a taxonomy to clarify and organise the burgeoning literature and to make a few concrete suggestions for avenues of future research.

Section: The Source Question: What Is the Source Of Aesthetic Reasons?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reasons, normativity, and value in aesthetics

King

2021

“…Some theorists have recently developed practice‐based accounts of the aesthetic domain (Lopes, 2018; Wolterstorff, 2015), and others have argued that aesthetic practices generate their own internal requirements—such as the obligation on musical performers to play the notes accurately, or on literary readers to respect authorial intention—that will be genuinely normative if and only if the practice is all‐things‐considered justified (Kubala, 2020; Rohrbaugh, 2020). The notion of a practice might be given a more full‐blooded sense in terms of a community that serves higher non‐aesthetic functions, such as the mutual appreciation of individual style within an autonomous political community, as in Samantha Matherne and Nick Riggle's recent interpretation of Schiller (2020). Practice‐based approaches can ground a wider range of aesthetic obligations— qua curator, but not qua private individual, one is obligated not to hang a painting upside down—but need further clarification about what it is to be a practitioner and to what extent aesthetic practices are escapable.…”

Section: The Source Of Aesthetic Obligationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aesthetic obligations

Kubala

2020

Are there aesthetic obligations, and what would account for their binding force if so? I first develop a general, domain-neutral notion of obligation, then critically discuss six arguments offered for and against the existence of aesthetic obligations. The most serious challenge is that all aesthetic obligations are ultimately grounded in moral norms, and I survey the prospects for this challenge alongside three non-moral views about the source of aesthetic obligations: individual practical identity, social practices, and aesthetic value primitivism. I conclude by raising questions for further work in this area. 1 | INTRODUCTION "I must hear the new Lady Gaga album." "You have to play all the notes." "He shouldn't wear those colors together." "We ought to fund more arts programs." "The moral rights of the author have been asserted." 1 Can sentences like these express genuine normative requirements, or obligations? If so, what could account for their binding force? These are the two major questions about aesthetic obligations: whether there are any and what their source would be if so. Philosophers tend to have two motivations, broadly speaking, for asking these questions. One is defensive, aiming to resist the pervasiveness of the moral. Obligations, and normativity more generally, have historically been theorized primarily in the moral domain, and the fact that its commands seem to have such powerful force implicitly prioritizes morality on the theoretical agenda. If there are aesthetic obligations, then that would put the aesthetic domain on a par with morality, at least in that respect. But this is a dubious motivation, as it is increasingly recognized that-or at least seriously debated whether-obligations can arise in many non-moral normative domains, including etiquette, the law, prudence, and epistemology. 2 And it is in any case possible that moral obligations always defeat non-moral obligations. 3 A better, second motivation is therefore simply to explore the landscape internal to aesthetics as a normative domain, before attempting to make cross-domain comparisons. We might wonder: what kind of aesthetic life do we have most reason to live? 4 To what extent are aesthetic choices even governed by normative considerations? Do any of those considerations ever have the force of obligations? Asking whether there are any aesthetic obligations requires knowing about their alleged contents: what are these purported obligations of or to? One initial possibility to set aside is that aesthetic obligations are obligations of

“…First, it is fast becoming standard among hedonism's critics to flag a distinction between two questions that a complete theory of aesthetic value should answer (Shelley, , p. 1; Lopes, , pp. 41–43, Lopes, ; King, ; Gorodeisky, ; Matherne & Riggle, n.d.; Matherne, n.d.; Peacocke, n.d.). The “demarcation question” asks what makes aesthetic values aesthetic —what distinguishes them from values in other domains?…”

Section: Fault Lines In the Debatementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The call to look beyond aesthetic hedonism also provides impetus to re‐examine historical figures and attend to theorists outside the mainstream of the Euro tradition whose work on aesthetic value does not fit cleanly within the hedonist paradigm. Matherne and Riggle (n.d.), for example, revisit Schiller's aesthetics to extract a broadly “communitarian” view that resonates with Riggle's own and casts aesthetic value as primarily a social good. Lopes () provides an example from South Asian aesthetics, by reading Bhattacharyya's () rasa theory as a kind of hybrid view that answers the demarcation question in terms of aesthetic pleasure, but departs from hedonism by answering the normative question by appeal to the value of the freedom characteristic of such pleasure.…”

Section: Alternatives To Aesthetic Hedonismmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Aesthetic hedonism and its critics

Berg

2019

This 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.