New Prospects for Aesthetic Hedonism

In Jennifer A. McMahon, Social Aesthetics and Moral Judgment: Pleasure, Reflection and Accountability. New York, USA: Routledge. pp. 13-33 (2018)
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Abstract

Because culture plays a role in determining the aesthetic merit of a work of art, intrinsically similar works can have different aesthetic merit when assessed in different cultures. This paper argues that a form of aesthetic hedonism is best placed to account for this relativity of aesthetic value. This form of hedonism is based on a functional account of aesthetic pleasure, according to which it motivates and enables mental engagement with artworks, and an account of pleasure-learning, in which it reinforces the appreciation of culture specific ways of engaging with art.

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Mohan Matthen
University of Toronto, Mississauga

Citations of this work

Aesthetic Hedonism and Its Critics.Servaas Van der Berg - 2020 - Philosophy Compass 15 (1):e12645.
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Reasons, normativity, and value in aesthetics.Alex King - 2021 - Philosophy Compass 17 (1):1-17.

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References found in this work

The Pleasure of Art.Mohan Matthen - 2017 - Australasian Philosophical Review 1 (1):6-28.
Play, Skill, and the Origins of Perceptual Art.Mohan Matthen - 2015 - British Journal of Aesthetics 55 (2):173-197.
Against Value Empiricism in Aesthetics.James Shelley - 2010 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (4):707-720.
Pleasure and the value of works of art.Jerrold Levinson - 1992 - British Journal of Aesthetics 32 (4):295-306.

View all 9 references / Add more references