Why Aesthetic Value Should Take Priority Over Moral Value - Aeon Essays

11/2/22, 8:16 PM Why aesthetic value should take priority over moral value | Aeon Essays
Everyday beauty. A Mother Delousing her Child’s Hair, Known as ‘A Mother’s Duty’ (c1660) by Pieter de Hooch. Courtesy
the Rijks Museum, Amsterdam
Attuned to the
aesthetic
The ultimate value of the world can be discovered
if you are sensitive to what is beautiful
by Tom Cochrane
Tom Cochrane is senior lecturer in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
at Flinders University in South Australia. He is co-editor of The Emotional Power of
Music (2013), and the author of The Emotional Mind: A Control Theory of Affective States
(2018) and The Aesthetic Value of the World (2021).
https://aeon.co/essays/why-aesthetic-value-should-take-priority-over-moral-value?utm_source=rss-feed 1/13
W e care about more than our own lives. We care about our families and
friends and our local communities. We care about the political scene, and
regularly check the news about the latest travesty. Every so often, something truly
horrific happens; the kind of calamity that makes one despair of the world. Every
so often, a child is murdered. It does not matter how far away it is. It matters to us.
It weighs on us.
Moral evils have a way of calling into question the value of the world. Can the
world really be a good place if such things happen? Classically, this is a problem
for theists. Yet anyone can wonder what value, if any, our Universe has. It is
closely related to wondering what the point of it all is.
But perhaps we shouldn’t worry about it. Perhaps we should regard the Universe
as evaluatively blank, and find value only in our own lives, or in the lives of our
loved ones. After all, many would say that value itself is something that we make
up. However, I’m not asking whether value is purely up to us or not. I’m asking
what we value, or should value. Even if we think that value is something that we
do, or is in some sense made out of pleasure, we can still wonder what those
valuing activities should be directed at, or in what things we can take pleasure.
Suppose that in response to moral evil someone says: ‘Yes, well that is obviously
regrettable, but it doesn’t really affect what I value. I just focus on my own life and
my friends and family.’ This seems an extraordinarily small-minded attitude to
take. I suspect there are very few people who would be fully satisfied if they and
their loved ones were secure while the rest of the world burned. Instead, most of
us prefer to set the value of our limited lives within a larger context. We want to
say that we are part of a good world, and even contribute to its goodness. And if
we can say this, the value of our own lives is considerably more robust. Indeed, if
our own lives are going badly, being able to look to the value of the world can be
an important buffer against nihilism and despair.
Furthermore, what we seek is a kind of ultimate or final value; a value that

requires no further rationale or justification. Without this, we are always prey to
the further question: but what is the value of that? Note that final value is not the
same as intrinsic value, which is value independent of context. While final value
can be intrinsic, it can also be fully contextually sensitive. This is exactly what we
seek when contemplating the world at large.
So can we find final value in the world? I believe that we can, so long as we are
attuned to aesthetic value. Aesthetic value is a catch-all term that encompasses
the beautiful, the ugly, the sublime, the dramatic, the comic, the cute, the kitsch,
the uncanny, and many other related concepts. It is a well-worn cliché that the
practical person scorns aesthetic value. But there’s reason to think that it is the
only way in which we can draw final positive value from the entire world. Thus, to
the extent that we care whether or not we live in a good world, we must be
aesthetically sensitive.
W hy think this? Alongside aesthetic value, I suppose there to be two other

general kinds of value: moral value and prudential value. Yet these other
values cannot offer an ultimate positive value for the world. To value something
prudentially is to value it in relation to one’s personal status or those with whom
one is personally affiliated. Yet this value is limited and fragile. It cannot justify the
world beyond the narrow borders of one’s personal sphere. It is also constantly
vulnerable to intrusions from the (dis)values of the wider world, as the COVID-19
pandemic demonstrated only too well. Moral value, meanwhile, is broader. Here
we concern ourselves with the relations between all morally significant beings. Yet
the world is, for the most part, not morally good. And even if people stopped
treating each other so brutally, it is not clear that this would deliver a definite
positive value so much as eliminate a definite negative value. Moreover, there is a
vast universe for which moral value has no relevance at all. Moral value only really
concerns the interactions of humans and some other animals on the filmy surface
of one particular planet that we know about.
In contrast, aesthetic value is precisely a way in which we can get positive final
value from the world at large. The value of a beautiful or sublime thing is final
because it needs no justification in terms of some other good that it allows us to
obtain. It need not make us richer, or healthier, or more popular in any way
whatsoever. In fact, like storms and volcanos, many objects of aesthetic value are
potentially harmful. Still their aesthetic value abides. This robustness is due to the
way that valuing something aesthetically is, psychologically, a way in which we get
beyond our own personal concerns and become oriented towards the goodness
of the thing in its own right. Moreover, the scope of aesthetic value is vast. It can
take in literally everything, either individually or in concert with other things. For
instance, the James Webb Space Telescope recently revealed to us galaxies,
formed more than 13 billion years ago, hidden in a patch of sky the size of a grain
of sand held at arms-length. Our reaction? To stare awestruck, marvelling at the
richness of the Universe, its sheer unadulterated magnificence. This is a
paradigmatic aesthetic experience.
Closer to home, aesthetic value is always to hand. Consider the lucid quality of
grass after the rain; the graceful swoop of a bird; an elegant gesture; a witty
remark; a dramatic cloudscape; the subtle shades of a cat’s fur; a finely tuned
engine; the exquisite symmetries of microscopic diatoms. Aesthetic value is
super-abundant. It takes it all in.
A more cosmic perspective finds the beauty in

all things
So I argue that aesthetic value is the only way to value the entire world, to affirm
that this is a good world. Yet some readers may regard this approach as spiritually
hollow or bankrupt. For those with religious sensibilities, the value of the Universe
is underwritten by an act of divine creation. Our part in God’s plan makes life
worthwhile and this world a good world. Even still, we can maintain the aesthetic
claim. For suppose that God created all of this. What then? What’s the value of
God’s plan? You must still find something of final positive value in that act of
creation. Ultimately, you will be brought back to aesthetic value; the sense of the
world’s goodness in its own right. This value stands for theist and atheist alike.
That the aesthetic value of the world is common ground for both theist and atheist
is illustrated by the striking fact that two of its most notable defenders are
Friedrich Nietzsche and Augustine of Hippo. Nietzsche is known as one of the

most strident atheists of all time, while Augustine is a literal saint. Here is
Augustine writing in 389 CE (from On Genesis against the Manichees):
I admit that I do not know why mice and frogs were created, or flies or
worms. Yet I see that all things are beautiful in their kind, though on
account of our sins many things seem to us disadvantageous. For I observe
the body and members of no living thing in which I do not find that
measures, numbers, and order contribute to its harmonious unity. I do not
understand where all these things come from if not from the highest
measure, number and order, which lies in the immutable and eternal
sublimity of God. If those silly chatterboxes would think of this, they would
stop bothering us and, considering all the beauties, both the highest and the
lowest, they would praise God their craftsman in all of them.
Augustine is drawing on a tradition stretching back to Plato (eg, in the Timaeus)

and the Pythagoreans that focuses on the beautiful orderliness of nature. The
classical notion of beauty is of things making sense and fitting together.
Augustine sees in it evidence of God’s providential design. Note in particular how
he points to flies and worms – creatures that we may find disgusting – pointing
out that it is ‘our sins’ (that is, our selfish interests) that make them seem
unworthy. A more cosmic perspective finds the beauty in all things.
Skipping forward 1,500 years, here is Nietzsche in his preface to The Birth of
Tragedy (1872):
[A]rt – and not morality – is set down as the properly metaphysical activity
of man; in the book itself the piquant proposition recurs time and again,
that the existence of the world is justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon.
Indeed, the entire book recognises only an artist-thought and artist-after-
thought behind all occurrences, – a ‘God’, if you will, but certainly only an
altogether thoughtless and unmoral artist-God, who, in construction as in
destruction, in good as in evil, desires to become conscious of his own
equable joy and sovereign glory; who, in creating worlds, frees himself from
the anguish of fullness and overfullness, from the suffering of the
contradictions concentrated within him.
Note that Nietzsche’s mention of God is metaphorical here. He was at this time of
his life influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer’s vision of the world as the
manifestation of an underlying, blindly striving will. Nietzsche would later
repudiate this metaphysics, though not his fundamental aesthetic sensibility.
While both Augustine and Nietzsche value the world in aesthetic terms, their
takes are rather different. Where Augustine focuses on beautiful order, Nietzsche
focuses on the drama of creation and destruction: of powerful forces set in
opposition. This is his notion of ‘Dionysian ecstasy’, which is intended to reconcile
us with suffering through a kind of thrilling intoxication. Nietzsche and Augustine
also differ in their moral perspectives. Nietzsche contrasts aesthetic value and
moral value, as the above passage indicates. Augustine partly derives his sense of
the harmonious order from the consideration that sinners will be sent to hell.
Listen to author Tom Cochrane in conversation with Brigid Hains at the Sophia Club.
You can also listen on your preferred podcast app here.
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Sophia Club Live Philosophy

Beauty and the good life
· ·
October 26, 2022 59 min Listen later
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S o where should we stand on aesthetic value? I side with Nietzsche in

contrasting aesthetic and moral value (contrast, not oppose, as I shall
elaborate). Yet I also agree with Augustine in celebrating the orderliness of
nature, an orderliness that the advances of sciences increasingly reveal. Moreover,
beauty and drama are not mutually exclusive. Both should be regarded as
indispensable elements of the aesthetic sense of the world. And not just these two,
but all the various aesthetic values. For although the Universe is certainly
beautiful, the perspective it involves can sometimes be distant or aloof. Dramatic
and comic value get us closer to the action. They allow us to draw value from
stress and frustration, from absurdity and error.
Aesthetic values constitute a psychological toolkit that enables us to appreciate

literally everything. The aesthetic attitude is then the inclination to seek out the
perspective from which the final value of things is apparent. We might describe it
as a kind of optimism that value is out there, should we observe things in the right
way. It can also be closely aligned with the purest motivation for science and
philosophy: to unpick the mysteries of things for its own sake.
In terms of its contribution to a well-lived life, the aesthetic attitude has two
important implications. First, since aesthetic value is independent of one’s
personal and practical aims, it endures even when one’s life is going very badly
indeed. No doubt there are times when it is not especially appropriate to look at
things aesthetically. We’d rather the emergency room doctor is not distracted by
the beauties of our internal organ structure. Still, the independence of aesthetic
value makes it something that you can turn to when life seems hopeless, and a
means of relief from personal problems. This is a significant source of resilience.
There is currently some debate over whether depression cuts one off from
appreciating beauty, but the philosopher Tasia Scrutton has plausibly argued that
depression may only undermine the enjoyment of cheerful sunny scenes, and not
the appreciation of the gothic aspects of nature that resonate with one’s condition
while also elevating and dignifying it.
How can everything be aesthetically valuable if

some of it, indeed a lot of it, is ugly?
The other important implication is a general model of the good life, exemplified
by the artist. The artist is receptive to the aesthetic value of the world. They are
inspired to reproduce that value, filtered through their own special sensitivities
and tastes, and to share it with others. This is an excellent model of the
meaningful life. Individual life can be conceived as the elaboration or
fractalisation of the final value of the world. In this way, the model encompasses
both due appreciation and self-realisation.
These ideas – that aesthetic value makes the world worthwhile, and that a good
life is lived in pursuit and reflection of that aesthetic value – are the substance of a
philosophy of life called ‘aestheticism’. One need not be an artist to be an
aestheticist. A wide range of activities can be conceived along these lines. Anyone
interested in drawing on the aesthetic values of the world, and then expressing
their sense of the world’s value, be it in creating something, or in sharing their
understanding with others, can legitimately think of themselves as adhering to
aestheticist principles. So, for example, scholars of all kinds can understand their
activities as appreciating and expressing what order there is to the world. Anyone
involved in engineering or crafts similarly draws on fundamental principles about
how things fit together, how forces and materials work, that they then encapsulate
in the objects they produce. Cultivators of nature, including human nature, are
similarly involved in the task of responding to what values there are and filtering
them through their special sensitivities.
Now, for this account of aestheticism to be convincing, I must address two major
problems, both of which concern the core principle that literally everything can
be aesthetically valued. The first problem is that of ugliness. How can everything
be aesthetically valuable if some of it, indeed a lot of it, is ugly? We may think of
this as the internal challenge to aestheticism because it acknowledges the
importance of aesthetic value but worries that it cannot be fully achieved. The
second problem is that of evil, particularly moral rather than natural evil. How can
we aesthetically value horrific acts of violence? Even if technically we could,
wouldn’t it be abhorrent to do so? We may think of this as the external challenge
to aestheticism, because it rejects aesthetic value from the standpoint of a distinct
value.
Let us consider the internal challenge first. There is no doubt that some things are
ugly. Mouldy stains on an old carpet, rotting animal carcasses, blackheads
sprouting on one’s face, broken appliances, out-of-tune instruments, and so on. In
general, what makes things ugly is where there is some norm for how things
ought to be, and then relative to this norm, the item is distorted, distended,
discoloured or spoiled in some way. Given that ugliness is relative to a norm, and
that norms are selective, it is conceptually speaking inevitable that some things
will be ugly. In fact, we might think that things can be beautiful only in contrast to
what is ugly (or at least bland).
There are many occasions when artists

deliberately produce ugliness in search of some
other value
One response to ugliness is to recognise what is known as ‘difficult beauty’. This is

the idea that the beauty of many things is not immediately apparent, but requires
their placement in appropriate context. Just as the dissonant chord in a piece of
music is redeemed as part of a larger harmony, so disease and disorder can be
redeemed when understood as parts of a larger grandeur. The notion is
particularly applied by philosophers to the appreciation of ecology. Holmes
Rolston writes in his book Environmental Ethics (1988):
If hikers come upon the rotting carcass of an elk, full of maggots, they find it
revolting. Here is a bad example of its kind, disharmony, a putrid elk. Any
landscape looked at in detail is as filled with dying as with flourishing
things. Everything is in some degree marred and ragged – a tree with
broken limbs, a crushed wildflower, an insect-eaten leaf. An eagle chick
plagued with ticks is not a pretty thing … [Yet if] we enlarge our scope in
retrospect and prospect (as ecology greatly helps us do), we get further
categories for interpretation. The rotting elk returns to the humus, its
nutrients recycled; the maggots become flies, which become food for the
birds; natural selection results in better-adapted elk for the next generation
… With a more sophisticated critical sense the aesthetician comes to judge
that the clash of values, pulled into symbiosis, is not ugly but a beautiful
thing. The world is not a jolly place, not a Walt Disney world, but one of
struggling, sombre beauty. The dying is the shadow side of the flourishing.
The same approach can allow us to see natural order and harmony in all manner
of initially ugly things; the existence of cancers and both their fascinatingly
complex biology and the medical struggles against them; the human ecology of
waste production and reclamation; mistakes and clumsiness as necessary
elements of agency and learning.
Another response to ugliness is to understand that it is specifically opposed to

beauty, but beauty is only one of many aesthetic values. So it is compatible with
its ugliness that an object simultaneously succeeds on some other aesthetic
criterion. Indeed, there are many occasions when both artists and other folk
deliberately produce or pay attention to ugliness in search of some other value.
Humour, for instance, is an important motivator for the Ugliest Dog in the World
competition.
Two other categories of positive ugliness are the powerful ugly and the
sympathetic ugly. The powerful ugly is exemplified by punk music, gargoyles and
other artworks expressive of rage. It can be exactly by defying norms of beauty
that an intense thrilling effect is achieved. In nature, the powerful ugly can be
discerned in jagged rock faces, a lightning-blasted tree, or the thrashing of a
crocodile killing its prey. The sympathetic ugly, meanwhile, is a way in which an
ugly appearance can give us a sense of noble inner character. Here ugliness is not
deliberately sought out but serves as a signal that the subject has endured
vicissitudes. Consider the beat-up face of an old boxer, the scars of surgery, or a
pair of old boots. Tragic art in particular often seeks out the sympathetic ugly,
because it allows us to more intensely appreciate the rich human qualities of the
tragic protagonist.
Overall, the aestheticist response to the problem of ugliness is to emphasise that

the aesthetic attitude is not fixated on easy beauties, and it is not uncritical. It is
rather about adjusting to the possible ways the object may be valued for its own
sake, some ways even trading on an object’s ugliness.
L
et us now turn to the external challenge to aestheticism: that it is morally
wrong to aesthetically appreciate evil. It seems wrong both to admire bad
people and the suffering of victims. Recall that part of the initial motivation for
aestheticism was the failure of moral value to give us a positive value for the
world. It is thus part of aestheticism to take moral evil seriously. In fact, I think evil
forces a significant qualification to aestheticism upon us. So long as we are not
sadists, we are, and indeed should be, psychologically constrained from
aesthetically appreciating horrific acts in themselves. Nietzsche at various points
seems to grasp the nettle and allow that pain and suffering can be directly
appreciated, but doing so seems to deny the intrinsic awfulness of suffering. A
better approach is to allow that, while suffering is intrinsically bad, it can, like
ugliness, be set in a wider context. We need not appreciate suffering to appreciate
the person who suffers.
Again, we can turn to the aesthetic version of sympathy. This is the aesthetic value
we experience when we enjoy sympathetic characters in a fiction, but it is equally
applicable to real-life individuals. It is aesthetic because it does not rely on having
a personal relationship with the other person. Rather, it involves enjoying their
rich and poignant individual qualities: the complex of both charms and flaws that
make up their character. It is an aesthetic version of the basic drive for love – the
sense that a person is lovable, though we may not be in a loving relationship with
them.
There are plenty of ethically serious yet

aesthetically rich depictions of bad people
By way of illustration, think of a documentary made about the victim of an

appalling crime, such as the excellent Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His
Father by Kurt Kuenne (2008). The best documentaries do not shy away from the
truth of the victim’s suffering. They are ethically appropriate acknowledgements
of it. At the same time, they give us the wider context of that person’s life, what
made them distinctive, and what impact they had on others. If it is not lurid for us
to watch such documentaries and, indeed, to intensely value them, then, similarly,
it is not morally inappropriate for us to aesthetically appreciate the victims of
crime. On the contrary, it is a way to celebrate that they exist or that they did
exist.
But what about bad people? Equally, there are plenty of ethically serious yet
aesthetically rich depictions of such people. One example is Oliver Hirschbiegel’s
film Downfall (2004), which manages to portray Hitler sympathetically (in part
due to Bruno Ganz’s magnificent performance) by capturing his mania and his
wretchedness. The film enables us to engage aesthetically with this person’s
humanity; we can grasp that he too is part of this aesthetically rich world of ours.
And if it is possible that even a psychopath like Hitler can be aesthetically
engaged with, then so too can anyone.
I must emphasise that our aesthetic sympathy for bad people is entirely
compatible with morally condemning them. From an aesthetic perspective, we
can curiously explore and be fascinated by evil, while also taking practical steps to
minimise it wherever possible. Aesthetic value is distinct from moral value, and
there will be times when one ought to act urgently rather than engage in aesthetic
contemplation, but aesthetic and moral value are not mutually exclusive. In fact,
moral struggle is aesthetically fascinating, and aesthetic action can be morally
worthy.
What the aestheticist resists is the notion that moral value has ultimate priority
over aesthetic value. Moral catastrophe tempts us to fall into despair, and to
condemn this world, but aesthetic value redeems it. Aesthetic value finds the final
value of things both in their quintessential characteristics and in their
manifestation of deep natural principles. It allows us to place suffering and evil
within a wider context. So it is when we turn our attention to the world as a whole
that, I claim, aesthetic value has priority.
aeon.co 1 November 2022

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11/2/22, 8:16 PM Why aesthetic value should take priority over moral value | Aeon Essays

Furthermore, what we seek is a kind of ultimate or final value; a value that

W hy think this? Alongside aesthetic value, I suppose there to be two other

A more cosmic perspective finds the beauty in

Friedrich Nietzsche and Augustine of Hippo. Nietzsche is known as one of the

Augustine is drawing on a tradition stretching back to Plato (eg, in the Timaeus)

Sophia Club Live Philosophy

S o where should we stand on aesthetic value? I side with Nietzsche in

Aesthetic values constitute a psychological toolkit that enables us to appreciate

How can everything be aesthetically valuable if

There are many occasions when artists

One response to ugliness is to recognise what is known as ‘difficult beauty’. This is

Another response to ugliness is to understand that it is specifically opposed to

Overall, the aestheticist response to the problem of ugliness is to emphasise that

There are plenty of ethically serious yet

By way of illustration, think of a documentary made about the victim of an

aeon.co 1 November 2022

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