Digital Commons@RISD Home > Division of Liberal Arts > Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive) > Vol. 21 (2023)
Abstract
What does it mean to cultivate aesthetic virtue in a way that contributes to our character? Pursue beauty, not its effect. Many contemporary theories emphasize the great effects of aesthetic life—expertise, individual style, aesthetic community, and so on. Directly pursuing these effects effaces our endeavors. We should instead love beauty itself because it is worthy of love. This love cannot be measured as easily as these effects, though it is characteristically marked by a self-forgetting receptivity and childlike curiosity.