Proper Emotions and Aesthetic Interest: : Examining the role of Desires in Experiences of Beauty

Recently, Kant's concept of aesthetic disinterestedness has been called into question (see Nehamas 2007, Riggle 2016). Both texts provide insight into the ways in which experiences of beauty are interested. That said, the precise relationship between beauty and the desires, which is at the core of aesthetic interest as a concept, remains elusive. I have therefore developed a theoretical account of how desires are integral to how people experience beauty. Central to my thesis is the rejection of the idea that people experience beauty as a mere sensation, as I argue from the position that beauty is experienced as a fully fledged emotion. I build my theory on the foundation of Jenefer Robinson’s paper “Emotion, Judgement, and Desire” which, like my thesis, is specifically concerned with the evaluative component of emotions. Her suggestion is that people’s emotional evaluations are shaped by desires that are held by them prior to their emotional experiences. I expand her thesis by suggesting that such desires initiate a second distinct type of desire that is also part of the evaluative component of emotions. I argue that the distinction I make between primary desires and response desires explains how people engage with beautiful objects in an interested manner. Primary desires are defined by me as deeply held desires that are directed, in terms of their intentionality, towards the subject’s life and self-affirming values, as explored by Riggle (2021). I argue that people are predisposed to seek out experiences of beauty because of their primary desires. The reason being that the perceptual properties of beautiful objects reflect the life and self-affirming values against which primary desires are directed. I then suggest that response desires are in experiences of beauty initiated by the subject recognising beautiful objects as “speaking to” their primary desires. As in, when someone perceives qualities that reflect their life and self-affirming values, they respond by developing response desires towards the object. I argue that such response desires, in so far as beauty is concerned, is manifested in a want to prolong one’s emotional experiences of beauty. Moreover, I suggest that by satisfying them, the subject continuously develops new response desires towards the beautiful object; making response desires an essential part of how people assert the values they recognise in beautiful objects