Digital Commons@RISD Home > Division of Liberal Arts > Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive) > Vol. 23 (2025)
Abstract
To find a thing cool is to see it as the expression (directly, analogically, or by association) of a certain kind of character. It is primarily attributed to human beings perceived as autonomous to an enviable degree: indifferent to emotions that the perceiver experiences as oppressive. This grounding of cool in the attribution of an intrinsic quality to a person is revealed by the way the attribution may be checked by a perception of effort, vulnerability, or insensibility in their behavior. Objects other than human beings appear cool either by analogy or association with this primary attribution. In finding someone or something cool, we are entertaining the idea of being a certain way that logically precludes the pleasure we are imagining. We do so for the pleasure the entertaining of this idea affords.