Thomas Adajian: "Aesthetic Goodness and Truth: Pragmatist Considerations"

Thomas Adajian, James Madison University: "Aesthetic Goodness and Truth: Pragmatist Considerations"

Abstract
The founder of pragmatism, C. S. Peirce, defined truth as the ultimate result of inquiry, and offered a correlative account of the idea of reality. Peirce also sketched a parallel account of aesthetic goodness. Unifying the two accounts are several things, including Peirce’s pragmatic theory of definition, the need to tie concepts to action and experience, and an appeal to regulative ideals. The paper reconstructs and explores this Peircean account of aesthetic goodness, bringing it into dialog with some arguments about some adjacent classical and contemporary views of aesthetic value, including those appealing to Humean “true judges,” Beardsleyan ideal disposition theories, and neo-sentimentalist merited-pleasure (Auburn) views. The aim is to show that this under-explored Peircean pragmatist approach is interesting and fruitful.