Relation to the world· Aesthetics
Elitism of taste
Axis: Hierarchy of tastes — Are some aesthetic pleasures higher than others, or is every hierarchy of taste a social construction?
Not all tastes are equal: qualified judges, trained and sensitive, recognize true beauty, and some pleasures are qualitatively higher than others. Kitsch and refinement are not on the same level.
Movements 1
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Platonisminferable
Owing to objective beauty and the hierarchy of goods, Platonism implies a hierarchy of taste: not all pleasures and objects are of equal worth, and the pleasures of the intellect, ordered to the true and the beautiful, are objectively superior to those of the body. The gradation follows the ladder leading from the sensible to the intelligible.
Plato, Philebus, 51a-53c, the hierarchy of pleasures · Plato, Republic, 580d-587a, pleasures compared
Philosophers 3
Platoexplicit
There is an objective hierarchy of pleasures and of the soul's objects: in the , only the philosopher, who has tasted all three kinds of pleasure, can judge which are truest, and his verdict ranks the pleasures of knowledge highest. Pleasures are not of equal worth, and competence to rank them belongs only to the well-ordered soul.
Republic, IX, 580d-583a · Philebus, 51a-53c
Millexplicit
Distinguishing higher pleasures raises a difficulty: by what measure does one rank a quality that, by definition, does not reduce to quantity? Mill's original answer is an empirical criterion: the only judge is comparative experience, the settled preference of those who have known both orders of pleasure alike, the competent judges. Their verdict leans toward the pleasures of the mind, even at the cost of a lesser contentment. The resulting is therefore no matter of birth or class but of cultivation and experience, in principle open to all.
Utilitarianism, ch. 2 (the verdict of the competent judges)
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Schopenhauerinferable
The perceives, in the very same thing, what the ordinary man, wholly given over to willing and to use, will never see: there are highly unequal degrees in the capacity to contemplate. The pleasures of the mind sharply rank men, and the 'philistine' is defined by his incapacity to enjoy without interest.
Parerga and Paralipomena, 'Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life'