A humanist should be an aestheticist
Admiring the aesthetic values of life and the world around us shouldn’t be underestimated. Our home is vast, diverse, and beautiful. Philosopher Tom Cochrane believes that we can lean on aesthetic values to find positives in the here-and-now, not in some grand end-narrative of the universe.
By Dr Tom Cochrane
Sometimes people resist the abandonment of religion because they fear that without God, our universe would be meaningless or empty of value. Another way to put this thought is that it’s because a person feels that the universe has value and meaning that they believe there is a God behind it all.
On the other hand, the rejection of God is often motivated by the sense that our universe has a negative moral value, and this is incompatible with God’s existence. An individual moved by this argument may respond either by abandoning the reality of value (a nihilist position) or by maintaining a moral commitment that’s independent of faith in God. The latter position is preferable. To retain a moral sense while recognising the moral horrors of the world is, I think, one of the humanist’s most appealing qualities. And morality is all the more authentic if it comes from us, rather than being imposed by a super-being.
“Morality is all the more authentic if it comes from us, rather than being imposed by a super-being.”
Nevertheless, the admitted negative moral value of the world presents a deep challenge to atheist and theist alike. How does one maintain a sense that the world has positive value? The humanist has abandoned the compensatory comfort that it’s all part of God’s plan. But what else can they appeal to? The personal commitment to moral value, I contend, cannot suffice. Even if one spends a lifetime trying to make this a morally better world, there is still a sense in which it will neither redeem the disvalue of millions of years of human and animal suffering, nor, if moral utopia were achieved, do more than avoid further negative value. More than this, when we abandon theism, I think we should also abandon the idea that the universe is building to some grand narrative climax. We need to find positive, final, value in the here and now.
“When we abandon theism, I think we should also abandon the idea that the universe is building to some grand narrative climax. We need to find positive, final, value in the here and now.”
Instead, I propose that we need to recognize the vital importance of aesthetic value. Aesthetic value is sometimes dismissed as superficial or unimportant. But I claim that aesthetic value is the main source of the sense that the world has positive value. Specifically, aesthetic value isn’t directed at how well one’s particular life happens to be going. We can admire the starry sky, a lightning storm, or the pattern on a butterfly’s wing without any sense that it benefits us in any practical way. In fact, when one’s life is going badly and it’s hard to maintain one’s zest for life, a solid sense that the world remains an amazing, beautiful thing is deeply reassuring.
“When one’s life is going badly and it’s hard to maintain one’s zest for life, a solid sense that the world remains an amazing, beautiful thing is deeply reassuring.”
Admiration and interest in the aesthetic value of the world is not just a concern for artists. It is also the purest motivation of the scientist, or anyone involved in scholarly pursuits. We are interested in uncovering what order there is in the world (including human nature) because it is marvellous to contemplate, independently of any practical benefits it should bring (though of course it also tends to have practical benefits). When we finally make sense of something, the sense of things clicking into place is the same thrill as we experience when we admire the beauty of an ingeniously constructed narrative, musical work, or abstract painting.
Note that aesthetic value is not only about beauty. It also encompasses the sublime- the sense of the grandness of things (sometimes highly destructive things)- the comic, the dramatic, the cute, and even the sympathetic value we get from characters in tragedies. We have a whole suite of cognitive resources that allow us to get value from the world (and each other) that is distinct from both moral and prudential value. These combined resources, I propose, allow us to find aesthetic value in everything. This is the core aestheticist idea.
Still, the moral problem may rear its head. Can aesthetic value really compensate for moral disvalue? Even worse, am I suggesting that we take aesthetic value in things that are morally bad? I regard aesthetic value and moral value as two distinct modes of value. The very same thing can sustain aesthetic value and moral disvalue (or vice versa). We can condemn something morally (such as evil or suffering), while still recognizing its place in the order of nature and that order having positive aesthetic value. Specifically, there is the aesthetic value of sympathy in which we can cherish a person- be glad that they exist, or that they did exist- despite the fact of their suffering. We do not need to aesthetically admire pain to appreciate the person to whom that pain happened.
“Specifically, there is the aesthetic value of sympathy in which we can cherish a person- be glad that they exist, or that they did exist- despite the fact of their suffering.”
Overall, the world has super-abundant aesthetic value and we do well to cultivate our awareness of it. Indeed, it is likely that a feel for this value leads some people to suppose there is a God behind it all. Yet the extraordinary workings of nature, from the emergence of complexity from simple laws to the special quintessence of individual things, are quite able to sustain our appreciation without the need for God to have brought them about.
Tom Cochrane is a senior lecturer in philosophy at Flinders University in Adelaide. He is the author of The Emotional Mind: A control theory of affective states (Cambridge University Press 2018) and The Aesthetic Value of the World (Oxford University Press 2021). You can find him on twitter @doctorcochrane
