Irene Martínez Marín

Aesthetic self transformation, the deliberate cultivation of appreciation for objects substantively different from those one currently values, raises distinctive rational challenges. Aspirants often experience conflicting aesthetic attitudes. Newly formed aesthetic judgments can clash with prior preferences, violating a fundamental coherence requirement that one’s aesthetic judgments should align with one’s aesthetic likings. Although coherence could be restored either by revising one’s likings or by abandoning the new judgments, this requirement alone cannot determine which path constitutes genuine transformation. This tension reflects a deeper conflict between two substantive norms. The norm of aesthetic improvement encourages engagement with works judged to be aesthetically superior, regardless of current preferences, whereas the norm of aesthetic identity preservation protects objects central to one’s aesthetic identity. I argue that this apparent dilemma dissolves once we recognize two features of aesthetic life. Choice plays both a selective and an identity constituting role, and taste is inherently temporal rather than static. Transformative reasoning should therefore aim to achieve coherence by aligning one’s attitudes with objects chosen for one’s aesthetic future, even when doing so requires revising identity constituting preferences. Properly understood, aesthetic transformation is a forward looking, self creative project that enables growth while preserving, rather than undermining, aesthetic authenticity.

There is a dimension of rationality, known as structural rationality, according to which a paradigmatic example of what it means to be rational is not to be akratic. Although some philosophers claim that aesthetics falls within the scope of rationality, a non-akrasia constraint prohibiting certain combinations of attitudes is yet to be developed in this domain. This essay is concerned with the question of whether such a requirement is plausible and, if so, whether it is an actual requirement of aesthetic rationality. Ultimately, this paper defends the view that aesthetics is no different from other domains in that it requires coherence between a subject’s mental states (in the aesthetic case, between what is judged and what is aesthetically liked).

The concept of autonomy is central to many debates in aesthetics. However, exactly what it means to be autonomous in our aesthetic engagements is somewhat unclear in the philosophical literature. The normative significance of autonomy is also unclear and hotly debated. In this essay, I propose a method for clarifying this elusive concept by distinguishing three distinct senses or varieties of aesthetic autonomy: experiential autonomy, competence-based autonomy, and personal autonomy. On this taxonomy autonomy is a context-sensitive concept and autonomy applies to several different moments or stages of aesthetic appreciation. Throughout this critical discussion, important issues concerning the nature of aesthetic appreciation are also explored.