Can Aesthetics Be Global?

Abstract

Philosophical aesthetics is to some extent beholden to what I will call personal aesthetics. By personal aesthetics, I mean the phenomena of individual aesthetic sensitivity: how each of us discerns and responds to elements of experience. I take that sensitivity to be finely woven into feeling to some degree at home in the world. There is something extremely local, and in a certain sense unreflective, about personal aesthetics – it is hard to notice one's own, historically specific aesthetic formation. Philosophical aesthetics, meanwhile, aspires to understand aesthetic life in a more reflective and general way. Aesthetic theories in the Western tradition, like most philosophical theories, try to articulate universally relevant and illuminating theoretical concepts and values. But can a theory of this kind acknowledge what is important at the level of personal aesthetics? Can aesthetic theories find fruitful application while also respecting the locality and variability of aesthetic sensitivity? What kinds of theoretical ambition and humility are called for in philosophical aesthetics?