Abstract

Most people are in agreement that guilty pleasures exist, and that we feel them at some point in our life. In my masters thesis I am going to try and answer why guilty pleasure exists and if it should exist. I am going to do this by exploring three different types of situations where our aesthetic tastes may not align with what we think is correct to like. I will call these situations the self theory, the social theory and the moral theory. I will discuss each one in turn and suggest reasons for and against them, ultimately concluding that the moral theory is the only theory that gives good reasons to think that guilty pleasure is justified.