Originally published as one of the Four Dissertations and then included in the 1758 edition of the Essays, the 1757 paper “Of the Standard of Taste” qualifies as David Hume’s official contribution to criticism.1 A few exceptions aside, no real or thorough effort has been taken by its critics to place the essay in the overall context of Hume’s science of human nature.2 Hume has certainly his share of responsibility in this: “Most of these essays were wrote with a View (...) of being published as WEEKLY-PAPERS, and were intended to comprehend the Design both of the SPECTATORS & CRAFTSMEN. But having dropped that Undertaking, partly from LAZINESS, partly from WANT OF LEISURE, and being willing to make Trial of my .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Values of Beauty: Historical Essays in AestheticsDabney TownsendValues of Beauty: Historical Essays in Aesthetics, by Paul Guyer; 359 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, $75.00, $27.99 paper.This volume collects thirteen essays that range over topics from the eighteenth century to the twentieth century. The earliest was published in 1986, the last in 2004, and three appear here for the first time. They are grouped topically by (...) period—"I. Mostly before Kant; II. Mostly Kant; III. Mostly After Kant"—rather than chronologically. While this order is useful, it introduces some dislocation if one approaches the book as a whole since the last essay in the book is the first chronologically, and part of the interest of the book lies in the changes in Paul Guyer's positions over time that are reflected in his careful reconsideration of topics that he has dealt with more extensively in his volumes on Kant's [End Page 422] philosophy. As one of the most important contemporary interpreters of Kant's aesthetics, those reconsiderations are well worth attending to.The focus of all of the essays is clearly on Kant's aesthetics. That perspective is clear even when Guyer is discussing the history of aesthetics prior to Kant. As he notes, "this history of the first decades of modern aesthetics has obviously been written with an eye to Kant" ("Origins of Modern Aesthetics: 1711–1735," pp. 32–33). It continues in the discussions of recent aesthetics. For example, Guyer concludes that "the effect that is intended on the revised Beardsleyan definition [of art] is in the tradition of the Kantian concept of the free play of imagination and understanding" ("From Jupiter's Eagle to Warhol's Boxes," p. 313). Danto and Mothersill are also, it is argued, in the Kantian tradition.There are, of course, some problems with this perspective, especially with regard to the pre-Kantian history of aesthetics. For example, Guyer finds Kant's distinction between pure beauty and apprehended beauty reflected in an earlier distinction between beauty of form and beauty of interest or utility. He writes: "The foundation of this theory [Hume's theory of beauty in the Treatise and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals] is the division of beauty into two classes, the first that of pleasurable sentiment caused by an immediate response—that is, a response not mediated by the intervention of imagination or judgment—to the form or other perceptual qualities of an object, and the second that of pleasurable sentiment, which arises only when the perception of the form of an object is supplemented by a concept or concepts brought to bear on it by imagination or judgment." ("The Standard of Taste and the 'Most ardent Desire of Society,'" p. 46). What Guyer identifies as a distinction between kinds of beauty is for Hume a distinction between sources of ideas, however. The second kind of beauty requires reflection and the combination of other ideas. For Hume, there are not two kinds of beauty but two ways that the ideas of beauty, which is just a form of pleasure, are sorted. Reservations about Guyer's perspective on the earlier history of aesthetics do not detract from the interest of his analysis, however, which is always careful and detailed.The central eight essays labeled "Mostly Kant" trace themes that Guyer has treated in much greater detail in his earlier books. Two central themes are especially prominent throughout these essays. First, Guyer views Kant's theory of beauty as the harmony of the imagination and the understanding: "The concept of the free yet harmonious play between the cognitive powers of imagination and understanding is the central concept in Kant's explanation of the experience of beauty and the analysis of the judgment of taste" ("The Harmony of the Faculties Revisited," p. 77). He refers back to essentially this formulation throughout the subsequent essays. Much of the interest of these essays lies in the way Guyer explicates and defends this central thesis against alternative readings of Kant and objections that it is inconsistent with the freedom from concepts and the purity of beauty that Kant claims.Second, Guyer reads Kant's aesthetics as... (shrink)

ZusammenfassungImmer mehr Menschen unterziehen sich chirurgischen Eingriffen, um ihr äußeres Erscheinungsbild zu verändern. Angesichts der omnipräsenten Konfrontation mit medial vermittelten Schönheitsstandards stellt sich die Frage des selbstbestimmten Umgangs mit den zur Verfügung stehenden Techniken der kosmetischen Chirurgie. Dieser Aufsatz analysiert die Frage, ob die Inanspruchnahme schönheitschirurgischer Maßnahmen als Ausdruck einer autonomen Entscheidung von Individuen betrachtet werden kann, oder ob sich entsprechende Körpereingriffe vielmehr dem Diktat von moralisch fragwürdigen Normen äußerer Erscheinungen verdanken und damit Ausdruck des zunehmenden Konformitätsdrucks und der Unterwerfung (...) des Individuums unter soziale Standards sind. Im Ergebnis wird gezeigt, dass ein subjektivistisches Autonomieverständnis für eine normative Bewertung schönheitschirurgischer Körpereingriffe unangemessen ist und anschließend ein Autonomiekonzept skizziert, das Bedingungen dafür formuliert, welche Formen der Nötigung als autonomiebeschränkend gelten können. (shrink)

This paper explores the neglected ‘harms-to-others’ which result from increased attention to beauty, increased engagement in beauty practices and rising minimal beauty standards. In the first half of the paper I consider the dominant discourse of beauty harms – that of ethics and policy – and argue that this discourse has over-focused on the agency of, and possible harms to, recipients of beauty practices. I introduce the feminist discourse which recognises a general harm to (...) all women and points towards an alternative understanding; although it too focuses on engaging individuals. I argue over-focusing on harms to engaging individuals is somewhat surprising especially in liberal contexts, as this harm can broadly be regarded as ‘self-harm’ (done by individuals to themselves, or by others employed by individuals to do so). The focus on engaging individuals has resulted in the neglect of significant and pressing harms-to-others in theory, policy and practice. In the second half of the paper I turn to actual and emerging harms-to-others. I focus on three particular harms-to-others as examples of the breadth and depth of beauty harms: first, direct harm to providers; second, indirect but specific harm to those who are ‘abnormal’; and third, indirect and general harm to all. I conclude that, contrary to current discourses, harms-to-others need to be taken into account to avoid biased and partial theorising and counter-productive policy-making. I advocate recasting beauty, in a parallel way to smoking, as a matter of public health rather than individual choice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:18 HUME AND THE STANDARD OF TASTE David Hume's critical theories, although fragmentary, have drawn increasingly serious attention in the twentieth century, yet even in 1976 Peter Jones, in reassessing Hume's aesthetics, can describe one of the most substantial of his critical essays, "Of the Standard of Taste," as underrated. Jones praises it as "subtle and highly complex," but while I agree with that judgment I also find the (...) essay quite puzzling. I am struck by certain features which look like structural weaknesses and by what seem to be inconsistencies, even contradictions, in Hume's argument. But perhaps the gravest difficulty facing interpretation of this essay is the irony which Hume seems to use, for this raises the question of just how seriously we are to take some of the more conventional views contained in "Of the Standard of Taste." I can begin to illustrate my uneasiness by considering Hume's use of a tall tale from Don Quixote, Part II, chapter xiii. Hume introduces this in a lighthearted way as part of his definition of delicacy of taste. It is the story of Sancho Panza's two kinsmen, who are such sensitive judges of wine that they can detect the taint of iron and leather imparted to a hogshead by the presence in it of a key on a thong. Now there are some interesting differences between Hume's version of this tale and the original. For example, where Hume has the two tasters deliberate over their wine before pronouncing it good, except for the slight taste of leather or iron, Cervantes says the first merely tried it with the tip of his tongue and the second just sniffed it, without tasting any at all. Further, Hume says "both 2 were ridiculed for their judgment," but there is no such 19 reaction mentioned in the original. Lastly, Hume calls the cause of the taint of iron "an old key," where 3 Cervantes describes it as "little." In short, while in the original interest is in the sensitivity of the taste of Sancho' s kinsmen for its own sake, Hume's emphasis is more on the relation of their taste to that of other people. He makes the procedure of tasting the wine as normal as possible and he gives prominence to the reactions of other people. Hume both tones down the more fabulous aspects of the story, making it less extraordinary and hence a better starting-point for a generalization about taste, and makes more explicit the conflict of opinion about the wine. He is using the story not just to define delicacy of taste but also to relate it to the problem of aesthetic judgment and the standard of taste. This is confirmed by the application Hume makes of his example. First, he uses the analogy between physical and aesthetic taste to claim that delicacy in both consists of the ability to detect minute effects and make fine discriminations. But the crucial question is what serves, like the key on the thong in the story, to confirm to outsiders that a man's aesthetic judgment is in fact more delicate than his neighbours'. Hume's answer is "the general rules of beauty... to produce these general rules or avowed patterns of composition is like finding the key with the leathern thong; which justified the verdict of Sancho' s kinsmen, and confounded those pretended judges who had condemned them" (273). But of course producing a general rule is not exactly like finding a physical key on a thong, and Hume's use of the word "avowed" here, which he repeats later, raises the difficulty of how the principles of art become accepted, and by whom. But, that apart, there is something odd about the discussion since the avowed principle is used, with support from examples, to 20 convince a bad critic that he is wrong, on the grounds that his judgment does not accord with the general judgment. This is the opposite of Sancho's story, in which his kinsmen were in a minority, derided, adds Hume, by the dull majority, and only vindicated by the discovery of the tainting key and thong. The aesthetic equivalent of... (shrink)

This article introduces a Special Issue comprising four papers emerging from the Beauty Demands Network project, and maps key issues in the beauty debate. The introduction first discusses the purpose of the Network; to consider the changing demands of beauty across disciplines and beyond academia. It then summarises the findings of the Network workshops, emphasising the complex place of notions of normality, and the different meanings and functions attached to ‘normal’ in the beauty context. Concerns are (...) raised here about the use of normal to justify and motivate engaging in beauty practices such as cosmetic surgery and ‘non-invasive’ procedures. Other workshop findings included the recognition of beauty as increasingly a global value rather than a culturally distinct ideal, and the understanding that there is no clear distinction between beauty practices that are considered standard and those that are considered extreme. These themes, especially the concerns around understanding of normal, are reflected in the recommendations made by the Network in its Briefing Paper, which are presented next in this introduction. A further theme picked up by these recommendations is the extent to which individuals who are not traditionally vulnerable may be so in the beauty context. Finally, the introduction highlights the key matters covered in the four papers of the Special Issue: regulatory concerns around cosmetic surgery tourism; the impact of digitally altered images from psychological and philosophical perspectives; the ethics of genetic selection for fair skin; and the attraction and beauty of the contemporary athletic body. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume’s Sceptical Standard of Taste*Jonathan Friday1it is generally agreed that Hume’s essay “Of the Standard of Taste”1 is the most valuable of the large number of works on what we now call aesthetics to emerge from the intellectual and cultural flowering of the Scottish Enlightenment. Here, however, agreement about the essay comes to an end, to be replaced by disagreement about what Hume identifies as the standard of taste. (...) Hume’s text encourages differing interpretations by appearing to identify a number of different standards of taste while continually suggesting there is only one. At the very least, one can find Hume hinting at a rule standard, a decision standard, an ideal spectator standard, a test of time standard as well as the position that there is no standard of taste at all. None of these views is explicitly rejected and more than one receives qualified approval. A review of the literature on Hume’s essay reflects its puzzling nature. Most commentators focus upon one or another of the standards Hume discusses; others examine more than one, but devote little attention to the relation between various standards appearing in the essay.2 [End Page 545]I will suggest in what follows that a better understanding of “Of the Standard of Taste” can be achieved by beginning with the question: What is Hume trying to do in this essay? As we shall see, Hume gives relatively explicit answers to this question in the essay and elsewhere, and attention to these takes us some way towards dissolving the puzzle of why so many positions on the standard of taste are discussed without any being explicitly rejected. Moreover, an understanding of Hume’s aims will make it much easier to clearly discern his own position on the possibility of a standard of taste. Therefore, in what follows, I will offer a reading of Hume’s essay which addresses the puzzle of the multiple standards and puts us in a much better position to answer the question of what Hume’s view is and whether it survives critical scrutiny.2The opening paragraphs of “Of the Standard of Taste” set the stage for the discussion that follows. Hume begins by observing that “the great variety of taste, as well as of opinion, which prevails in the world, is too obvious not to have fallen under everyone’s observation.”3 People of similar background and culture notice the wide differences of taste within their own like-minded community, and when they turn their attention to “distant nations and remote ages”4 the phenomenon is found to be even more pronounced. Further reflection suggests this variety of taste to be even greater in reality than appearance since although we may agree in our evaluative language—e.g., that beauty is to be praised and ugliness scorned—“when critics come to particulars this seeming unanimity vanishes”5 and argument arises about what objects are properly referred to by such evaluative terms. Hume goes on to conclude the opening remarks of his essay by connecting this state of affairs with his familiar views about morality and moral language. These latter reflections are suddenly broken off and Hume turns to the main subject of his essay.He begins with a “natural” response to the phenomena he has just considered. He writes:It is natural for us to seek a Standard of Taste, a rule by which the various sentiments of men may be reconciled; at least a decision afforded confirming one sentiment and condemning another.6It is worth emphasizing that Hume characterizes the much sought standard in two very different ways—as a rule reconciling sentiments and, more modestly, as [End Page 546] a decision confirming (or otherwise) a sentiment.7 Although this passage provides the initial characterizations of the standard of taste Hume is investigating, and ought therefore to have been accorded some attention by commentators, it has been largely ignored.8 This is unfortunate since it proves crucial to understanding what Hume is attempting to do in the essay. I will return to this point, but before doing so we need to further set out the problem as Hume conceives it... (shrink)

This paper addresses two key works in the eighteenth‐century debate on the problem of taste: the Abbé Du Bos's Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture and David Hume's ‘Of the Standard of Taste’ . A successful solution to the ‘paradox of taste’ should sustain the democratising impulse behind Du Bos's appeal to the judgment of the ‘public’ whilst, at the same time, acknowledging the role of learning and discovery which underpins Hume's recourse to the opinion of the (...) best qualified critics. This can be achieved, it is argued, by taking up a standpoint which is internal to our actual arguments or disputes about art, drawing upon and recommending a set of practices which allow for the development and revision of our judgments about works of art. (shrink)

This paper addresses two key works in the eighteenth‐century debate on the problem of taste: the Abbé Du Bos's Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture (1719) and David Hume's ‘Of the Standard of Taste’ (1757). A successful solution to the ‘paradox of taste’ should sustain the democratising impulse behind Du Bos's appeal to the judgment of the ‘public’ whilst, at the same time, acknowledging the role of learning and discovery which underpins Hume's recourse to the opinion of (...) the best qualified critics. This can be achieved, it is argued, by taking up a standpoint which is internal to our actual arguments or disputes about art, drawing upon and recommending a set of practices which allow for the development and revision of our judgments about works of art. (shrink)

This paper explores why some issues count as acceptable topics for global ethics and justice and some do not. It argues that over the last few decades a cannon of global ethics and jus­tice has emerged, and that, like other canons, it is prescriptive and exclusionary. It asks why beauty is excluded from the cannon given there are standard ethical and justice concerns which attach to beauty. The paper considers possible reasons for this exclusion, including that beauty (...) is a concern only of the rich and that it is a trivial or minority issue. It argues that underlying and compounding such reasons are discipline-specific reasons which derive from the parent discipline of Philosophy. It concludes that what is in and out of global theorising is a matter of justice itself and one which global theorists should address. (shrink)

But in many orders of beauty, particularly those of the finer arts, it is requisite to employ much reasoning, in order to feel the proper sentiment; and a false relish may frequently be corrected by argument and reflection. There are just grounds to conclude, that moral beauty partakes much of this latter species, and demands the assistance of our intellectual faculties, in order to give it a suitable influence on the human mind (EPM, 173).

Notions of space and place are often used interchangeably in everyday speech, but they are distinguished both conceptually and historically. When put in relation to space and place, beauty reveals all its vitality and ties to socio-political issues, like: why do we consider a place beautiful and another place ugly? How do taste judgments about places influence planning, tourism, heritage policies, urban, and landscape architecture? I will develop my argument in four points. First, I will shortly pin down the (...) main tenets of a concept of beauty that is inherently spatial, by rephrasing Roger Scruton’s insights on the beautiful and Ed Casey’s notion of ‘implacement’. Second, I will address the interconnection between the modern emergence of a quantitative and objectivist concept of space and a non-relational idea of beauty. Third, I will expose the relationship between the concept of place, idiographic and qualitative, and the emergence of a site-specific, phenomenologically based concept of beauty. In conclusion, I will show how non-relational conceptions of beauty risk to colonize aesthetic experience and I will take a stand for a relational conception of beauty against the risk of standardization of both landscape appreciation and planning. (shrink)

This paper presents the story of an isiXhosa traditional healer, Nomzi Hlathi, as told to the first author. Nomzi was asked about how she came to be an igqirha and the narrative focuses on those aspects of her life story that she understood as relevant to that developmental process. The material was obtained from a series of semi-structured interviews with Nomzi, with some collateral from her cousin, and synthesised into a chronological narrative presented in Nomzi’s own words. The aim of (...) the study was to examine her account of her unfolding experience within three hermeneutic frames. The first is the isiXhosa traditional account of what it is to become an igqirha, a process initiated by intwaso, an illness understood to be a call from the ancestors, and guided by messages from the ancestors in dreams and other symbolic communications. The second is the perspective of Western Clinical Psychology on the cognitive, emotional and behavioural disturbances that characterise intwaso. The third is the perspective of transpersonal psychology on the nature and development of shamanic healing gifts, as understood from observations of such practices in traditional societies across the world. As the narrative of Nomzi’s story is quite long, this paper presents her narrative as well as the methodology which gave rise to it. The interpretative review of the material from each of the three perspectives is presented in a second paper. (shrink)

The aesthetic skeptic maintains that it is futile to dispute about taste. One and the same work of art might appear beautiful to one person but repellent to another, and we have no reason to prefer one or another of these conflicting verdicts. Hume argues that the skeptic, however, moves too quickly. The crucial question is whether qualified critics will agree on their evaluations. And the skeptic fails to provide sufficient evidence that their verdicts will diverge. We have reason to (...) expect that a consensus will emerge over time, moreover, since aesthetic values are grounded on universal principles of human nature. Skeptics might doubt that there is a natural basis for a standard of taste, but this proposal is supported by recent work in experimental aesthetics and cognitive science. (shrink)

This thesis presents an interpretation of David Hume’s essay ‘Of the Standard of Taste’. The most distinguishing feature of this interpretation is the emphasis placed on the significance of Hume’s general philosophical position in a faithful reading of this philosophical classic. The success of this interpretation will show that Hume’s essay should be read as an integral part of his system of philosophy. There are three parts in this thesis. The first part is an overview of some key aspects of (...) Hume’s philosophy which are relevant to my interpretation. Unlike many contemporary philosophers in the analytic tradition, Hume is a systematic thinker. A faithful reading of his works should take his general philosophical framework seriously. Therefore, this overview of his system serves as the general background of the next two parts. The second part is a discussion of Hume’s aesthetic thought. More specifically, it provides an exposition of his view on beauty and judgements of beauty. This part completes the stage-setting for the development of my interpretation, by helping the reader form a more specific conceptual framework for understanding Hume’s essay. The third part develops an interpretation of ‘Of the Standard of Taste’ according to what has been provided in the previous two parts. It starts with an outline of the essay, which indicates Hume’s aim in writing it. After that, a few sections are devoted to some central elements of the essay. The last section of this part discusses four controversies concerning Hume’s essay. These discussions establish the strength of this interpretation, or at least, the fruitful prospect of an interpretative project that integrates Hume’s essay into his whole system. (shrink)

Research ethics review is a critical aspect of the research governance framework for human subjects research. This usually requires that research protocols be submitted to a research ethics committee for review and approval. This has led to very rapid developments in the domain of research ethics, as RECs proliferate all over the globe in rhyme with the explosion in human subjects research. The work of RECs has increasingly become elaborate, complex, and in many cases urgent, necessitating supporting rules and procedures (...) of operation. Guidelines for elaborating standard operating procedures for the functioning of RECs have also been proposed. The SOPs of well-placed and well-resourced RECs have tended to pay much attention to details, resulting, as a consequence, in generally long, elaborate, intricate and complex SOPs; a model that can hardly be replicated by other committees, equally under ethics review pressures, but working under much more constraining conditions in resource-destitute environments. In this paper, we looked at the content and length of SOPs from African RECs and compared them to the World Health Organization ’s guidelines as the gold standard. We also looked at the SOPs from the Ethics Review and Consultancy Committee of the Cameroon Bioethics Initiative that we elaborated in a simplified way in 2013, and compared them to the WHO’s guidelines and to the other SOPs. Sixteen SOPs from 14 African countries were collected from various sources. Their average length was of 30 pages. By comparison to the guidance of the WHO, only six of them were found acceptable with more than 70 % of the criteria from the gold standard that were fully described. Among those six, two of them were very long and detailed, while the four remaining SOPs ranged from 16 to 24 pages. The ERCC SOPs are seven pages long but maintain all that is of essence for the rigorous, efficient and timely review of protocols. We are convinced that, because of their brevity, simplicity, clarity and user-friendliness, the ERCC SOPs recommend themselves as a model template to, at least, committees similarly situated and/or circumstanced as the ERCC of the Cameroon Bioethics Initiative is. In fact, brevity, clarity, simplicity and user-friendliness are recognized values. Whatever is brief and clear is better than what is not and saves time. What is simple and user-friendly is better than what is not even though the two have the same aims because it saves both time and mental energy. And if this be true in general, it is even truer of the context and its peculiar constraints that we are addressing. (shrink)

Recent feminist theory has attempted to bring considerations of women’s agency into analyses of the meaning and consequence of beauty norms in women’s lives. This article argues that these works have often been limited by their use of individualist frameworks or by their neglect of considerations of race and class. In this article I draw upon examples of African-American utilization of beauty discourse and practices in collective efforts to resist racism. I argue that there is no singular (...) class='Hi'>beauty standard enforced by a unified male gaze. Instead, we should conceive of fields in which differently located individuals and groups invest in and promote particular ways of seeing beauty, producing both penalties and pleasures in women’s lives. (shrink)

The paper offers a semantic and pragmatic analysis of statements of the form ‘x is beautiful’ as involving a double speech act: first, a report that x is beautiful relative to the speaker’s aesthetic standard, along the lines of naive contextualism; second, the speaker’s recommendation that her audience comes to share her appraisal of x as beautiful. We suggest that attributions of beauty tend to convey such a recommendation due to the role that aesthetic practices play in fostering and (...) enhancing interpersonal coordination. Aesthetic practices are driven by a disposition towards the attunement of attitudes and aesthetic recommendations contribute to forwarding such attunement. Our view is motivated by an attempt to satisfy the following set of desiderata: to account for the experiential nature of aesthetic judgments, disagreements in aesthetic debates, and the normative aspirations of aesthetic discourse, as well as to avoid appealing to error theory and realist ontological commitments. (shrink)

Why wasn’t Hume a sceptic about matters of taste? He was a thoroughgoing sceptic about fundamental matters in traditional metaphysics, such as cause, causal necessitation, inductive inferences, the self, even external objects. Yet, without exception, Hume’s aesthetics is read as abruptly reversing his sceptical position and promoting a timeless and objective standard for judging beauty. I reject the dominant approach for displacing the gains of his scepticism. To impute to Hume knowledge of a standard that depends essentially on a (...) relation to certain persons makes him sound more like an idealist than an empiricist philosopher with naturalistic leanings. Instead, I read his aesthetic naturalism against the background of his sceptical commitments, by reconstructing his dilemma of taste along the lines of his general scepticism about cause. I argue that he deduces ‘that’ an unknown standard is operative, but in a qualified sense not ruled out by his scepticism. (shrink)

Current research on construction of the female body focuses on non-Hispanic women in the United States. The idealized Latina body, however, is rapidly becoming commodified and objectified in global popular culture. Using standardized and open-ended surveys and group and individual interviews, the author examines the negotiation of sociocultural ideals and body image by adolescents at the intersection of gender, race, and beauty. These young women hold racist beauty ideals but are flexible when judging the appearance of real-life women. (...) They perceive two competing or complementary prototypes of beauty, one white and one Latina. This study fills a gap in the literature on beauty and the body by examining a non-U.S. sample that does not fit into the usual Black-white dichotomy of race. (shrink)

Beauty has captured human interest since before Plato, but how, why, and to whom does beauty matter in today's world? Whose standard of beauty motivates African Americans to straighten their hair? What inspires beauty queens to measure up as flawless objects for the male gaze? Why does a French performance artist use cosmetic surgery to remake her face into a composite of the master painters' version of beauty? How does beauty culture perceive the disabled (...) body? Is the constant effort to remain young and thin, often at considerable economic and emotional expense, ethically justifiable? Provocative essays by an international group of scholars discuss beauty in aesthetics, the arts, the tools of fashion, the materials of decoration, and the big business of beautification—beauty matters—to reveal the ways gender, race, and sexual orientation have informed the concept of beauty and driven us to become more beautiful. Here, Kant rubs shoulders with Calvin Klein. Beauty Matters draws from visual art, dance, cultural history, and literary and feminist theory to explore the values and politics of beauty. Various philosophical perspectives on ethics and aesthetics emerge from this penetrating book to determine and reveal that beauty is never disinterested. Foreward by Eleanor Heartney; "Introduction" by Peg Brand [Weiser] included here. Authors include Marcia M. Eaton, Noel Carroll, Paul C. Taylor, Arthur C. Danto, Kathleen M. Higgins, Susan Bordo, Dawn Perlmutter, Eva Kit Wah Man, Anita Silvers, Hilary Robinson, Kaori Chino, Sally Banes, and Peg Brand's essay "Bound to Beauty: An Interview with Orlan." (available on PhilPapers). (shrink)

This is an 18,500 word bibliography of philosophical scholarship on Beauty which was published online in the Oxford Bibliographies Online. The entry includes an Introduction of 800 words, 21 x 400-word sub-themes and 168 annotated references. INTRODUCTION Philosophical interest in beauty began with the earliest recorded philosophers. Beauty was deemed to be an essential ingredient in a good life and so what it was, where it was to be found and how it was to be included in (...) a life were prime considerations. The way beauty has been conceived has been influenced by an author’s other philosophical commitments, metaphysical, epistemological and ethical and such commitments reflect the historical and cultural position of the author. For example, beauty is a manifestation of the divine on earth to which we respond with love and adoration; beauty is a harmony of the soul which we achieve through cultivating feeling in a rational and tempered way; beauty is an idea raised in us by certain objective features of the world; beauty is a sentiment which can nonetheless be cultivated to be appropriate to its object; beauty is the object of a judgment by which we exercise the social, comparative and inter-subjective elements of cognition and so on. Such views on beauty not only reveal underlying philosophical commitments but also reflect positive contributions to understanding the nature of value and the relation of mind and world. One way to distinguish between beauty theories is according to the conception of the human being that they assume or imply, for example, where they fall on the continuum from determinism to free will, ungrounded notions of compatibilism notwithstanding. For example, theories at the latter end might carve out a sense of genuine innovation and creativity in human endeavours while at the other end of the spectrum authors may conceive of beauty as an environmental trigger for consumption, procreation or preservation in the interests of the individual. Treating beauty experiences as in some respect intentional, characterises beauty theory prior to the twentieth century and since, mainly in historically inspired writing on beauty. On the other hand, treating beauty as affect or sensation has always had its representatives and is most visible today in evolutionary inspired accounts of beauty (though not all evolutionary accounts fit this classification). Beauty theory falls under some combination of metaphysics, epistemology, meta-ethics, aesthetics and psychology. While in the twentieth century beauty was more likely to be conceived as an evaluative concept for art, recent philosophical interest in beauty can again be seen to exercise arguments pertaining to metaphysics, epistemology, meta-ethics, philosophy of meaning and language in addition to philosophy of art and environmental aesthetics. (shrink)

The seventeenth-century Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards has become popular again in contemporary theological discussion. Central to Edwards' theology is his concept of beauty. Delattre wrote the standard work on this topic half a century ago. However, Delattre approaches Edwards mainly as a philosopher, and he does not address how Edwards employs the concept of beauty to explain and defend traditional Reformed doctrines. Recent writings by McClymond, Holmes, and others have shown that defending the Reformed tradition is a fundamental (...) concern of Edwards. This work reveals how Edwards, starting with the common notion that beauty means the appropriate proportional relationship, develops a theological aesthetic that contributes to a rational understanding of major doctrines such as the Trinity, Christology, and eschatology. It shows that Edwards is both an innovative speculative theologian and a staunch defender of Reformed orthodoxy. (shrink)

In the ultimate meeting of the sublime with the ridiculous" (London Evening Standard) My Beautiful Despair blends the existential philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard with the superficial musings of Kim Kardashian West, based on the popular Twitter feed @KimKierkegaard. The love child of Søren Kierkegaard and Kim Kardashian, the @KimKierkegaard Twitter account has been admired, praised, and adored in The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Financial Times, The Economist, New York, Buzzfeed, and more, and has amassed nearly (...) a quarter of a million Twitter followers, including J.K. Rowling and Anna Kendrick. A mash-up of Kim's tweets and observations with Kierkegaard's philosophy, Kim Kierkegaardashian shares their musings on fashion, beauty, brunch, and the relentless waves of existential dread that wash over us day after day. Now in a humorous, illustrated gift book, perfectly suited for our existential times, Kierkegaardashian's philosophical insights are juxtaposed for the first time with Dash Shaw's brilliant black-and-white illustrations. A sample of the revelations included in My Beautiful Despair include: - I have majorly fallen off my workout-eating plan! AND it's summer. But to despair over sin is to sink deeper into it. - Obsessed with protecting your skin, lips, hair & face from the sun? Close the cover of the coffin tight, really tight, and be at peace. - I like my men like I like my coffee: a momentary comfort in the midst of all my suffering. - What is the operation by which a self relates itself to its own self, transparently? Selfie. - What if everything in life were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears? Scared LOL!! - Glamour, menswear, top hat. (shrink)

Proper linear models are those in which predictor variables are given weights such that the resulting linear composite optimally predicts some criterion of interest; examples of proper linear models are standard regression analysis, discriminant function analysis, and ridge regression analysis. Research summarized in P. Meehl's book on clinical vs statistical prediction and research stimulated in part by that book indicate that when a numerical criterion variable is to be predicted from numerical predictor variables, proper linear models outperform clinical intuition. Improper (...) linear models are those in which the weights of the predictor variables are obtained by some nonoptimal method. The present article presents evidence that even such improper linear models are superior to clinical intuition when predicting a numerical criterion from numerical predictors. In fact, unit weighting is quite robust for making such predictions. The application of unit weights to decide what bullet the Denver Police Department should use is described; some technical, psychological, and ethical resistances to using linear models in making social decisions are considered; and arguments that could weaken these resistances are presented. (shrink)

To what extent does dance contribute to an ideal of beauty that can enrich human quality of life? To what extent are standards of beauty predicated on an ideal human body that has no disability? In this chapter, we show how conceptions of proportionality, perfection, and ethereality from the Ancient Greeks through the 19th century can still be seen today in some kinds of dance, particularly in ballet. Disability studies and disability-inclusive dance companies, however, have started to (...) change this. The disabled person can be beautiful, we will show, in dance and in life, under a disability aesthetics that follows Edmund Burke (1730-1797) and that suggests an alternative standard of beauty, which we call “beauty-in-experience,” where beauty is perceived in the qualitative experience of abled and disabled dancers moving together in dance. (shrink)

We make choices about our own appearance and evaluate others' choices – every day. These choices are meaningful for us as individuals and as members of communities. But many features of personal appearance are due to luck, and many cultural beauty standards make some groups and individuals worse off (this is called “lookism”). So, how are we to square these two facets of personal appearance? And how are we to evaluate agency in the context of personal beauty? (...) I identify three ways of responding to these questions: beauty advo- cacy, beauty skepticism, and beauty revisionism. Advocates connect an honorific sense of beauty with personal charac- ter. Skeptics focus on beauty standards, and primarily offer a social critique of beauty standards. Some skeptics suggest embracing other aesthetic ideals – even ugliness. Revision- ists critique beauty standards, but retain an honorific sense of beauty. Each position offers tools to evaluate personal agency as aesthetic agency, whether first-personally or through our appreciation of others' appearance. (shrink)

The Sleeping Beauty problem is test stone for theories about self-locating belief, i.e. theories about how we should reasons when data or theories contain indexical information. Opinion on this problem is split between two camps, those who defend the "1/2 view" and those who advocate the "1/3 view". I argue that both these positions are mistaken. Instead, I propose a new "hybrid" model, which avoids the faults of the standard views while retaining their attractive properties. This model _appears_ to (...) violate Bayesian conditionalization, but I argue that this is not the case. By paying close attention to the details of conditionalization in contexts where indexical information is relevant, we discover that the hybrid model is in fact consistent with Bayesian kinematics. If the proposed model is correct, there are important lessons for the study of self-location, observation selection theory, and anthropic reasoning. (shrink)

In this article I defend an account of beauty labor as a form of resistance that can enable individuals and communities to combat body oppression. Focusing on the “Fuck Flattering!” movement, a social-media-driven movement in which fat people purposefully wear unflattering clothing to resist antifat fashion and oppressive body standards, I first set three criteria necessary for an act of beauty labor to count as one of resistance. I argue that (1) the agent in question must be (...) situated as a less ideal candidate for attributions of beauty, (2) the agent must have some level of knowledge or awareness of the norms (defined in light of dominant groups) and their harms, and (3) that knowledge or awareness of the harms of said norms must inform the agent's act of beauty labor. Based on this account of beauty labor as resistance, I argue that beauty labor can combat larger systems of oppression and incite meaningful change insofar as it enables individuals to claim and reclaim space (both digital and physical) from which fat people have been historically excluded, while affording an opportunity for education and unpacking of oppression and bias, and expanding the fashion industry. (shrink)

The standard interpretation of Aldo Leopold’s land ethic is that correct land management is whatever tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community, of which we humans are merely a small part. From this interpretation, it is a short step to interpreting Leopold as a sort of deep ecologist or radical environmentalist. However, this interpretation is based on a small number of quotations from Leopold taken out of context. Once these quota­tions are put into context, (...) and once the broader context of Leopold’s mature writings and his actions as a land manager are taken into account, it becomes clear that he is much closer to being an enlightened anthropocentrist than he is to being anything like a radical environmentalist. When properly understood, Leopold’s land ethic recognizes that fundamental human interests must be treated with the highest possible respect, and it emphasizes the incredible challenge and need for modesty in identifying the correct tradeoffs between lesser human interests and the interests of the broader biotic community. (shrink)

The aspects of facial attractiveness have been widely studied, especially within the context of evolutionary psychology, which proposes that aesthetic judgements of human faces are shaped by biologically based standards of beauty reflecting the mate quality. However, the faces of primates, who are very similar to us yet still considered non-human, remain neglected. In this paper, we aimed to study the facial attractiveness of non-human primates as judged by human respondents. We asked 286 Czech respondents to score photos (...) of 107 primate species according to their perceived “beauty”. Then, we analyzed factors affecting the scores including morphology, colors, and human-likeness. We found that the three main primate groups were each scored using different cues. The proportions of inner facial features and distinctiveness are cues widely reported to affect human facial attractiveness. Interestingly, we found that these factors also affected the attractiveness scores of primate faces, but only within the Catarrhines, i.e., the primate group most similar to humans. Within this group, human-likeness positively affected the attractiveness scores, and facial extremities such as a prolonged nose or exaggerated cheeks were considered the least attractive. On the contrary, the least human-like prosimians were scored as the most attractive group. The results are discussed in the context of the “uncanny valley”, the widely discussed empirical rule. (shrink)

Individual differences in bodily beauty result in significant differences in life outcomes. Some such differences seem unwarranted. On this basis, various authors have argued that there is a kind of discrimination—lookism—that affects those who are aesthetically disadvantaged. Several strategies have been proposed to address lookism. One aim of this paper is to draw a distinction between two sorts of anti-lookist strategies. Redistributive approaches propose to alter the current distribution of beauty, either by broadening beauty standards, or (...) by giving individuals more options to improve their appearance. Revisionary approaches argue that we should drop our current conception of human beauty in favour of one that is more compatible with social justice goals. Another aim of the paper is to argue that two problems posed by revisionary strategies represent a prima facie reason to prefer redistributive ones. Both problems are rooted in a trade-off between value and justice that is characteristic of revisionary approaches. (shrink)

In this paper, I ask whether there is a defensible philosophical view according to which everybody is beautiful. I review two purely aesthetical versions of this claim. The No Standards View claims that everybody is maximally and equally beautiful. The Multiple Standards View encourages us to widen our standards of beauty. I argue that both approaches are problematic. The former fails to be aspirational and empowering, while the latter fails to be sufficiently inclusive. I conclude by (...) presenting a hybrid ethical–aesthetical view according to which everybody is beautiful in the sense that everybody can be perceived through a loving gaze. I show that this view is inclusive, aspirational and empowering, and authentically aesthetical. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Individual differences in bodily beauty result in significant differences in life outcomes. Some such differences seem unwarranted. On this basis, various authors have argued that there is a kind of discrimination—lookism—that affects those who are aesthetically disadvantaged. Several strategies have been proposed to address lookism. One aim of this paper is to draw a distinction between two sorts of anti-lookist strategies. Redistributive approaches propose to alter the current distribution of beauty, either by broadening beauty standards, (...) or by giving individuals more options to improve their appearance. Revisionary approaches argue that we should drop our current conception of human beauty in favour of one that is more compatible with social justice goals. Another aim of the paper is to argue that two problems posed by revisionary strategies represent a prima facie reason to prefer redistributive ones. Both problems are rooted in a trade-off between value and justice that is characteristic of revisionary approaches. (shrink)

People can come to seem to us more beautiful the better we get to know their personalities. Some have taken this to show there is a moral kind of beauty. According to the moral beauty view, moral personality traits realise moral beauty in people. Here I present a problem for the standard articulation of the moral beauty view, namely that it is not a logical truth that people inherit the beauty of their virtues. I call (...) this the ‘inheritance problem’. I present an alternative articulation of the moral beauty view that does not give rise to the problem. On this alternative articulation, the moral beauty view is not as revisionary as it is standardly taken to be. (shrink)

The Sleeping Beauty problem has spawned a debate between “Thirders” and “Halfers” who draw conflicting conclusions about Sleeping Beauty’s credence that a coin lands Heads. Our analysis is based on a probability model for what Sleeping Beauty knows at each time during the Experiment. We show that conflicting conclusions result from different modeling assumptions that each group makes. Our analysis uses a standard “Bayesian” account of rational belief with conditioning. No special handling is used for self-locating beliefs (...) or centered propositions. We also explore what fair prices Sleeping Beauty computes for gambles that she might be offered during the Experiment. (shrink)

The Sleeping Beauty problem has spawned a debate between “thirders” and “halfers” who draw conflicting conclusions about Sleeping Beauty's credence that a coin lands heads. Our analysis is based on a probability model for what Sleeping Beauty knows at each time during the experiment. We show that conflicting conclusions result from different modeling assumptions that each group makes. Our analysis uses a standard “Bayesian” account of rational belief with conditioning. No special handling is used for self-locating beliefs (...) or centered propositions. We also explore what fair prices Sleeping Beauty computes for gambles that she might be offered during the experiment. (shrink)

The Sleeping Beauty problem has attracted considerable attention in the literature as a paradigmatic example of how self-locating uncertainty creates problems for the Bayesian principles of Conditionalization and Reflection. Furthermore, it is also thought to raise serious issues for diachronic Dutch Book arguments. I show that, contrary to what is commonly accepted, it is possible to represent the Sleeping Beauty problem within a standard Bayesian framework. Once the problem is correctly represented, the ‘thirder’ solution satisfies standard rationality principles, (...) vindicating why it is not vulnerable to diachronic Dutch Book arguments. Moreover, the diachronic Dutch Books against the ‘halfer’ solutions fail to undermine the standard arguments for Conditionalization. The main upshot that emerges from my discussion is that the disagreement between different solutions does not challenge the applicability of Bayesian reasoning to centered settings, nor the commitment to Conditionalization, but is instead an instance of the familiar problem of choosing the priors. (shrink)

In this, the second of two papers, three interpretative investigations are undertaken of Nomzi’s story of her troubled childhood, her dreams of ancestors calling her to become an igqirha, her training by experienced healers, various rituals that were performed at different stages of her life, and her eventual graduation as an igqirha at the age of 61. The narrative cannot be understood apart from the framework of the isiXhosa traditional understanding of intwaso, the initiatory illness, the role of the ancestors, (...) and the manner in which clairvoyant abilities of divination and healing are developed under their guidance. Nomzi’s account, however, reflects a considerable modification of the tradition, several features of which she does not seem to understand herself. From a clinical psychological perspective, Nomzi’s behavioural disturbances in childhood, as well as her lifelong suspiciousness and paranoia, can be understood as a consequence of an unstable childhood in which there was no secure attachment, nor any adult guidance on emotional regulation of the kind needed to form the basis of a stable adult personality. From the perspective of transpersonal psychology, it seems likely that Nomzi was endowed with a degree of natural clairvoyance, but her development as a healer was impaired by displacement of her paranoid ideation into the role of witch-finder, and her chronic social alienation. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Background for Hume's Views Beauty, Virtue, and the Double Association Beauty and Virtue as Powers of Producing Pleasure Beauty, Utility, and Sympathy Sympathy and the Standard of Virtue Beauty and Virtue in Hume's Later Philosophy The Standard of Taste More on Delicacy and the Pleasures of Beauty Beauty and Morality in “Of the Standard of Taste” References Further Reading.

The emphasis on the limitations of objectivity, in specific guises and networks, has been a continuing theme of contemporary analytic philosophy for the past few decades. The popular sport of baiting feminist philosophers — into pointing to what's left out of objective knowledge, or into describing what methods, exactly, they would offer to replace the powerful objective methods grounding scientific knowledge — embodies a blatant double standard which has the effect of constantly putting feminist epistemologists on the defensive, on the (...) fringes, on the run.This strategy can only work if objectivity is transparent, simple, stable, and clear in its meaning. It most certainly is not. In fact, taking objectivity as a sort of beautiful primitive, self-evident in its value, and all-powerful in its revelatory power, requires careless philosophy, and the best workers in metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of science have made reworked definitions of objectivity absolutely central to their own projects. In fact, classic feminist concerns with exploring the impact of sex and gender on knowledge, understanding, and other relations between human beings and the rest of the world fall squarely within the sort of human and social settings thatare already considered central in most current analytic metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of science. I argue that the burden of proof is clearly on those who wish toreject the centrality and relevance of sex and gender to our most fundamental philosophical work on knowledge and reality. (shrink)

In this paper I consider an understudied form of the design argument which focuses on the beauty of the natural world and which argues, on that basis, that the world requires a divine Artist in order to explain its beauty. Against this view, one might raise a question concerning the beauty of, and in, this divine Artist. What explains the divine beauty? This kind of explanatory regress objection is exactly like that used by Philo in Hume’s (...) Dialogues to undercut standard versions of the design argument focused on the orderliness of the world. Here I argue that Philo’s explanatory regress objection likewise significantly undercuts versions of the design argument focusing on the beauty of the world. (shrink)

Whatever approach one favors, the relationships between the most abstract and disembodied sense of beauty and the physical, erotic sense are clearly harder to sever than many philosophers have previously realized. The soul may be glad to forget its connection with the body, as Santayana put it, but that gladness indicates that the connection is there to be forgotten in the first place. And often it is not so much forgotten as reshaped and transfigured. Such transformations are explored here (...) with excursions into the place of beauty in art; into the queering of beauty in the exemplars of beautiful artworks; into explorations of the marginal and exotic that allure while defying conventional models; into the literal carving of facial features for cosmetic and artistic purposes that both conform to and challenges norms of appearance. In such different contexts these authors dramatize the various ways that beauty can function in relation to personal desires, artistic values, and social authority. Here we can discover beauty not only as a quality and a value, but also as a project and a practice that drives our lives from both within and without--internal standards, external expectations, and ambivalence meeting in provocative disputation. (shrink)

Concerning the notorious Sleeping Beauty problem, philosophers have debated whether 1/2 or 1/3 is rational as Beauty’s credence in the coin’s landing heads. According to Kierland and Monton, the answer depends on whether her goal is to minimize average or total inaccuracy because, while the expected average inaccuracy of Halfing is smaller than that of Thirding, the expected total inaccuracy of Thirding is lower than that of Halfing. In this paper, I argue that Halfing is average accuracy dominated (...) but Thirding is not; and that each of the standard forms of Halfing and Thirding regards a different credence assignment as better than itself in terms of total accuracy. Therefore, Halfing is irrational, and Thirding is likely to be rational, for the goal of minimizing average inaccuracy; but both Halfing and Thirding, at least in their standard forms, are irrational for the goal of minimizing total inaccuracy. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Beauty and Goodness Patterns of Beautiful Poetry Human Excellence and the Standard of Poetic Beauty Moral Psychology Love of Beauty and Being Just Conclusion.