Aesthetic Ideals
In Kathleen Stock & Katherine Thomson-Jones (eds.),
New Waves in Aesthetics. Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 188-202 (
2008)
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Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to understand how sortals determine what aesthetic properties an object has. It is argued that Frank Sibley’s notion of an ideal of beauty does not help us to achieve that aim. Instead, it is argued, the special aesthetic relevance of sortals is better understood by reference to the (non-aesthetic) ideas of normality and functionality associated with sortals. In passing, the paper also argues that there must be a maximum degree of beauty if non-comparative judgments of beauty are possible, as they seem to be.