Dove e quando

Let Beauty Be Your Guide: a New Look at Aesthetic Universality
Onlince conference by Keren Gorodeisky (Auburn)

Reflection on aesthetic goods and the engagement proper to them pulls us in different directions. First, on the face of it, appreciative aesthetic engagements seem to shape who we are as persons (PERSONAL). Yet, the same aesthetic goods that are tightly connected to who we are as persons also contrast with “personal goods” or “private goods”—those goods that are good for me, given my circumstances, needs, predilections, styles, or ideals. For one thing, they seem centrally intersubjective and social.  Engaging them seems to be particularly powerful in either connecting us or keeping us apart, alienating us from each other (SOCIABLE). Moreover, natural beauties, like the Arashiyama Bamboo grove in Kyoto or Cinque Terre coastline in Italy, “cultural goods” like the temple of Esta in Egypt or the terracotta sculptures of the Nok people, and excellent artworks and craftworks seem different from personal goods like my child’s first garment, my grandma’s necklace, or my family’s well-trodden joke. The former appear as “those that everyone has reason to value” (Matthes, 2015). For example, we know of millions travelling to the Kiyomizu-Dera in Kyoto last summer, even though they grew up amid a different style of architecture and honed a very different kind of sensibility. Relatedly, organizations such as UNESCO declare “damage to cultural property belonging to any people whatsoever means damage to the cultural heritage of all mankind” (UNESCO, 1954; my italics) (UNIVERSAL). This presentation aims to (1) explore and defend the truth and the appeal of aesthetic universalism, the view that aesthetic goods are not good just for me personally, or for me as amember of a specific community, practice, or culture, but good simpliciter, good period, meriting valuing by everyone, and (2) show that aesthetic universalism has the resources to accommodate all the three intuitions that open this abstract: PERSONAL, SOCIABLE, and UNIVERSAL.