Attuned to the aesthetic
The ultimate value of the world can be discovered if you are sensitive to what is beautiful
"I’m not asking whether value is purely up to us or not. I’m asking what we value, or should value. Even if we think that value is something that we do, or is in some sense made out of pleasure, we can still wonder what those valuing activities should be directed at, or in what things we can take pleasure."
By Tom Cochrane
https://aeon.co/essays/why-aesthetic-value-should-take-priority-over-moral-value
Hmmmm.
🤔
Value ethics is not something I've done a lot of reading in. Yet it seems to me, (off the top of my head), that beauty and awe, are special categories. Not touched by intrinsic value vs contextual value. They seem a sort of meta value, approachable, best by art, and poetry, rather than philosophy.
This is an old question about the "usefulness" of practical philosophy.
As usual when faced with a category a error, jumping up a level, doesn't always work.
@corlin "As usual when faced with a category a error, jumping up a level, doesn't always work."
Ha ha! So true!
Thanks for the reply -- there is so much to think about in all this.
@corlin I just got through this. I've been pondering the concept of value a lot in the last few years, but I hadn't encountered a succinct summary laid out like this.
It's sort of reassuring that there are people many steps ahead of me on whatever quirk catches my attention.
I appreciate the dichotomy of intrinsic value vs contextual value -- I like this commonality that transcends theism.
But I don't know how to square this with an over-valuing on "beauty" I see in the world.
Thoughts?