Abstracts

Anthony Öhnström

"Examining the Role of Desires in Experiences of Beauty"

Recently, Kant's concept of aesthetic disinterestedness has been called into question (see Nehamas 2007, Riggle 2016). These texts expand the notion of beauty as to make room for the subject's personal preferences, wants, needs and values. But whilst they - especially taken together – provide much insight into the ways in which experiences of beauty are interested, the core relationship between beauty and the subject’s desires remains unclear. I have therefore developed a theoretical account of how desires are integral to the ways in which people experience beauty. Central to my thesis is the rejection of the idea that people experience beauty as a mere sensation. Rather, I argue from the position that beauty is experienced as a proper emotion (i.e. as a complex emotional process, composed of a network of distinct and related components). I build my theory on the basis of Jenefer Robinson’s paper “Emotion, Judgement, and Desire” which, like my thesis, is specifically concerned with the evaluative component of emotions. Her suggestion is that the subject's emotional evaluation of objects are coloured and informed by a set of desires held by people prior to their emotional experiences. I expand her theory by suggesting that such desires initiate a second distinct type of desire, that is also part of the evaluative component of emotions. The core of my thesis is my assertion that Riggle’s and Nehamas’ writings can be used to substantiate my distinction between primary desires and response desires. With reference to Riggle’s writings, I develop a view of primary desires as deeply held desires that are directed, in terms of their intentionality, towards the subject’s self-affirming and life-affirming values. I argue that people are predisposed to seek out experiences of beauty because of their primary desires. The reason being that perceptual properties of beautiful objects “reflect” the life and self-affirming values to which primary desires are directed. With regard to Nehamas’ notion of people wanting to possess beautiful objects, I suggest that response desires are initiated by the subject recognising beautiful objects as “speaking to” their primary desires. As in, when someone perceives perceptual qualities that reflect their life and self affirming values, they respond by developing response desires towards the object. I argue that such response desires, in so far as beauty is concerned, is manifested in a want to prolong the emotional experiences of beauty. Moreover, I suggest that by satisfying them, the subject continuously develops new response desires towards the beautiful object. Response desires are therefore integral to the subject asserting the values that they recognise in beautiful objects. Ultimately, this paper defends the view that the emotion constituting people’s experiences of beauty features two types of desire. Moreover, I state that it is the interplay between them that constitute the ways in which experiences of beauty are “interested”, as explained by Nehamas and Riggle. Because (i) it is primary desires that determine which kind of perceptual qualities that the subject is drawn to and (ii) it is response desires that make the subject interested in the existence of the object. Furthermore, in constructing my argument I indicate that my thesis approaches solutions to a variety issues that have long plagued philosophical theorising on beauty. Firstly, it gives us reason to understand knowledge as mental discoveries insinuating the subject that their emotion of beauty is appropriate, which in turn motivates them to continue their engagement with the beautiful object. Secondly, I suggest that the pleasure that we normally associate with beauty can be explained as the satisfaction of the subject’s response desires, and that this is important because, contrary to Kantian notions of disinterestedness, it suggests that the pleasure a person derives from beauty is directly tied to to their engagement with the beautiful object.