Volume 12, Issue 1, Spring/Summer 2009
Jim D. Shelton
Pages 24-30
Beauty, Play, and the Meaning of Life
This paper discusses the views of Moritz Schlick connecting aesthetics with the meaning of life. The fundamental question that Schlick asks is how anything appears beautiful. The discussion of the beautiful comes down to a discussion of aesthetic pleasure. Aesthetic pleasure has the characteristic of having no use defined in survival terms of self-preservation and propagation. Art, for Schlick, is seen as essentially play. Schlick addressed how his view that connects aesthetic pleasure and play essentially to the non-useful, can be explained in light of the theory of natural selection. Then this is related to the meaning of life as play or youth.