Aesthetic Understanding

Winner of the Fabian Dorsch ESA Essay Prize.In this paper, I introduce an account of aesthetic understanding. Recent discussions of aesthetic understanding have associated it with aesthetic justification and with understanding why, for example, a given object is aesthetically valuable. I introduce a notion of aesthetic understanding as a form of objectual understanding, which I refer to as ‘appreciative understanding’. Appreciative understanding is related to and partly constituted by an agent’s capacity to comprehend and experience an artwork holistically and to communicate effectively regarding its particular aesthetic character and value. I then argue for the understanding account of aesthetic judgement on which the paradigmatic form of aesthetic judgement is grounded on appreciative understanding. This argument partly consists in demonstrating how the understanding account can explain the autonomy of aesthetic judgement. In closing, I explore the potential of the understanding account to explain the structure of our appreciative practices. That is, I put forward the view that our appreciative practices are structured so as to promote appreciative understanding.