Aesthetic Pleasure Explained

One of the oldest platitudes about beauty is that it is pleasant to perceive or experience. In this article, I take this platitude at face value and try to explain why experiences of beauty are seemingly always accompanied by pleasure. Unlike explanations that have been offered in the past, the expl...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of aesthetics and art criticism 2019-03, Vol.77 (2), p.121-132
Main Author: DE CLERCQ, RAFAEL
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aesthetics
Beauty
Emotions
Psychological aspects
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Summary:One of the oldest platitudes about beauty is that it is pleasant to perceive or experience. In this article, I take this platitude at face value and try to explain why experiences of beauty are seemingly always accompanied by pleasure. Unlike explanations that have been offered in the past, the explanation proposed is designed to suit a "realist" view on which beauty is an irreducibly evaluative property, that is, a value. In a nutshell, the explanation is that experiences of beauty are experiences in which it appears that something is beautiful, and that such experiences are identical to experiences of aesthetic pleasure.
ISSN:0021-8529
1540-6245
DOI:10.1111/jaac.12636