In 2007, Song-Ming Ang initiated Guilty Pleasures, a series of listening parties dedicated to sharing beloved “bad songs” and facilitating critical discussions about complex desires and hierarchies of taste. In this article, I extend on these discussions and offer a theory of guilty pleasures. Informed by queer and critical approaches to affect and minor aesthetic categories, I argue that guilty pleasures are characterized not by a specific medium or style, but rather by their ability to evoke pleasure interrupted by a (...) meta-response of guilt. This experience is activated by the outmoded, saccharine, or naff qualities of an object. I contrast guilty pleasures with good-bad art, painful art, and objects that foster akrasia, and provide an extended examination of naff, another minor aesthetic category with roots in Polari that intersects aspects of camp, heteronormativity, and Lauren Berlant’s notion of “cruel optimism.” I ultimately argue that guilty pleasures are far from a simplistic category of low art enjoyed with indifference. Instead, I perceive guilty pleasures as always enjoyed with a degree of criticality or skepticism that is tethered to the beholder’s taste, life experiences, and values. (shrink)

The difficulty in discovering a difference between killing and letting die has led many philosophers to deny the distinction. This paper seeks to develop an argument defending the distinction between killing and letting die. In relation to Rachels’ cases, the argument is that (a) even accepting that Smith and Jones may select equally heinous options from the choices they have available to them, (b) the fact that the choices available to them are different is morally relevant, and (c) this difference (...) in available choices can be used to distinguish between the agents in certain circumstances. It is the principle of justice, as espoused by Aristotle, which requires that equal things are treated equally and that unequal things are treated unequally that creates a presumption that Smith and Jones should be treated differently. The magnitude of this difference can be amplified by other premises, making the distinction morally relevant in practical reality. (shrink)