This paper raises puzzles concerning our grasp of others’ aesthetic selves. I first articulate a conception of an aesthetic self, understood as an autonomously adopted orientation to objects of aesthetic value, encompassing the embrace of aesthetic reasons and the qualitative appreciative states that follow. This articulation is motivated by the commonplace observation that people’s aesthetic identities are important to them. Given this importance, we might think it salutary to grasp other people’s aesthetic selves, under the general auspices of ‘interpersonal understanding’. (...) Given the conception of aesthetic selves, we might think that empathy is an appropriate way to do so. But, second, I argue that you can’t find out about another’s aesthetic self via empathy. We might instead think that aesthetic conversation is the way to grasp aesthetic selves. However, third, I argue that the aim of finding out about others’ aesthetic selves is at odds with the ostensible aims of aesthetic conversation, which are to do with effacing individuality and creating commonality. So aesthetic selves seem hard to grasp. I finally briefly canvass some ways of solving this problem, without settling on a firm answer, and consider how the thoughts might extend to practical identities more generally. (shrink)

What is it for art-critical conversation to be productively and appropriately responsive to a work of fine art? Broadly, contemporary work on the nature and purpose of aesthetic discourse tends to prioritize one of two poles: the need for agreement in judgement and/or sensibility, and the flourishing of individuality through aesthetic response. I propose that these alternatives each express the legacy of Kantian and Schillerian thought, respectively. Furthermore, I argue that a favourable approach is available if we look to Friedrich (...) Hölderlin’s way of characterizing the kind of communication that can occur between friends. This is a framework that binds together a plurality of perspectives and voices with what it is for one’s individuality to flourish in and through aesthetic response. Drawing on Hölderlin’s thought, I submit Diversity-in-Unity as a norm on art-critical conversation. In art criticism, individual perspectives need to be reciprocally shaped in new and surprising ways. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Perfume has not received much philosophical attention. I discuss a feature of perfume that partly contributes to this neglect: the pervasive changes that perfumes undergo. These changes are much more comprehensive than the changes that characterize other aesthetic objects, and we might think that perfume is, as a result, impossibly subjective and private an aesthetic object. I identify two categories of change that raise this worry: changes that happen to a scented liquid itself and changes that happen to perfumes (...) on bodies. In both cases, the appreciative practices for perfume take a collaborative approach to change and thereby help establish a public, shared aesthetic object. Change remains distinctive of perfume and becomes central to appreciation, but without becoming an obstacle to aesthetic experience. (shrink)