more on this theme | more from this thinker
Full Idea
Egoistic accounts of the sublime allow that our fragility is revealed, but also claim we feel something positive about ourselves. Non-egoistic accounts question whether the self-negation is so terrible after all.
Gist of Idea
Accounts of sublimity differ over whether we learn something good about ourselves
Source
Tom Cochrane (The Aesthetic Value of the World [2021], 3.2)
Book Ref
Cochrane,Tom: 'The Aesthetic Value of the World' [OUP 2021], p.58
A Reaction
[compressed] I think I favour the non-egoistic approach. It is like the thrill of seeing a great performance in the arts or sport. It humbles me - but also I feel part of something greater than me. Like a child on the winning side in a war.
| 24164 | Even non-theists can wonder what, if anything, makes the universe good [Cochrane] |
| 24165 | Pleasure has an intrinsic (independent) value, but that is not a final (for its own sake) value [Cochrane] |
| 24166 | Pleasure serves to maintain our relationship with its source [Cochrane] |
| 24167 | Love is a mutual reciprocation, not just a desire for something [Cochrane] |
| 24169 | We can treat value as a verb; we value something when we positively engage with it [Cochrane] |
| 24168 | Aesthetic value appreciates a thing objectively, as a good in its own right [Cochrane] |
| 24171 | Morality is not a final value; it concerns how we distribute the things we actually finally value [Cochrane] |
| 24173 | We can only understand form if we grasp the whole of which things are parts [Cochrane] |
| 24174 | Beauty is fittingness, of details uniting within a pattern [Cochrane] |
| 24175 | Accounts of sublimity differ over whether we learn something good about ourselves [Cochrane] |
| 24176 | A person's activities have value when they receive full attention [Cochrane] |