Editing Beauty (section)

=== Hedonism ===
{{Main|Hedonism}}
A very common element in many conceptions of beauty is its relation to [[pleasure]].<ref name="DeClercq2019">{{cite journal |last1=De Clercq |first1=Rafael |title=Aesthetic Pleasure Explained |journal=Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism |date=2019 |volume=77 |issue=2 |pages=121–132 |doi=10.1111/jaac.12636 |doi-access=free }}</ref><ref name="BeautyandUgliness" /> Hedonism makes this relation part of the definition of beauty by holding that there is a necessary connection between pleasure and beauty, e.g. that for an object to be beautiful is for it to cause pleasure or that the experience of beauty is always accompanied by pleasure.<ref name="Gorodeisky">{{cite journal |last1=Gorodeisky |first1=Keren |title=On Liking Aesthetic Value |journal=Philosophy and Phenomenological Research |date=2019 |volume=102 |issue=2 |pages=261–280 |doi=10.1111/phpr.12641 |s2cid=204522523 }}</ref> This account is sometimes labeled as "aesthetic hedonism" in order to distinguish it from other forms of [[hedonism]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Berg |first1=Servaas Van der |title=Aesthetic Hedonism and Its Critics |journal=Philosophy Compass |date=2020 |volume=15 |issue=1 |pages=e12645 |doi=10.1111/phc3.12645 |s2cid=213973255 |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/VANAHA |access-date=February 10, 2021 |archive-date=February 11, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210211034801/https://philpapers.org/rec/VANAHA |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Matthen |first1=Mohan |last2=Weinstein |first2=Zachary |title=Aesthetic Hedonism |url=https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195396577/obo-9780195396577-0223.xml |website=Oxford Bibliographies |access-date=10 February 2021 |language=en |archive-date=January 18, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210118012154/https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195396577/obo-9780195396577-0223.xml |url-status=live }}</ref> An influential articulation of this position comes from [[Thomas Aquinas]], who treats beauty as "that which pleases in the very apprehension of it".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Honderich |first1=Ted |title=The Oxford Companion to Philosophy |date=2005 |publisher=Oxford University Press |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/HONTOC-2 |chapter=Beauty |access-date=February 10, 2021 |archive-date=January 29, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210129082636/https://philpapers.org/rec/HONTOC-2 |url-status=live }}</ref> [[Immanuel Kant]] explains this pleasure through a harmonious interplay between the faculties of understanding and imagination.<ref name="DeClercq2019" /> A further question for hedonists is how to explain the relation between beauty and pleasure. This problem is akin to the [[Euthyphro dilemma]]: is something beautiful because we enjoy it or do we enjoy it because it is beautiful?<ref name="BeautyandUgliness" /> Identity theorists solve this problem by denying that there is a difference between beauty and pleasure: they identify beauty, or the appearance of it, with the experience of aesthetic pleasure.<ref name="DeClercq2019" />

Hedonists usually restrict and specify the notion of pleasure in various ways in order to avoid obvious counterexamples. One important distinction in this context is the difference between ''pure'' and ''mixed pleasure''.<ref name="DeClercq2019" /> Pure pleasure excludes any form of pain or unpleasant feeling while the experience of mixed pleasure can include unpleasant elements.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Spicher |first1=Michael R. |title=Aesthetic Taste |url=https://iep.utm.edu/a-taste/ |website=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |access-date=February 10, 2021 |archive-date=February 14, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210214142548/https://iep.utm.edu/a-taste/ |url-status=live }}</ref> But beauty can involve mixed pleasure, for example, in the case of a beautifully tragic story, which is why mixed pleasure is usually allowed in hedonist conceptions of beauty.<ref name="DeClercq2019" />

Another problem faced by hedonist theories is that we take pleasure from many things that are not beautiful. One way to address this issue is to associate beauty with a special type of pleasure: ''aesthetic'' or ''disinterested pleasure''.<ref name="StanfordBeauty" /><ref name="Britannica" /><ref name="Levinson" /> A pleasure is disinterested if it is indifferent to the existence of the beautiful object or if it did not arise owing to an antecedent desire through means-end reasoning.<ref name="RoutledgeBeauty" /><ref name="DeClercq2019" /> For example, the joy of looking at a beautiful landscape would still be valuable if it turned out that this experience was an illusion, which would not be true if this joy was due to seeing the landscape as a valuable real estate opportunity.<ref name="StanfordBeauty" /> Opponents of hedonism usually concede that many experiences of beauty are pleasurable but deny that this is true for all cases.<ref name="Gorodeisky" /> For example, a cold jaded critic may still be a good judge of beauty because of her years of experience but lack the joy that initially accompanied her work.<ref name="DeClercq2019" /> One way to avoid this objection is to allow responses to beautiful things to lack pleasure while insisting that all beautiful things merit pleasure, that aesthetic pleasure is the only appropriate response to them.<ref name="Gorodeisky" />