Being for Beauty: Aesthetic Agency and Value

No values figure as pervasively and intimately in our lives as beauty and other aesthetic values. They animate the arts, as well as design, fashion, food, and entertainment. They orient us upon the natural world. And we even find them in the deepest insights of science and math. For centuries, however, philosophers and other thinkers have identified beauty with what brings pleasure. Dominic McIver Lopes challenges this interpretation, instead offering an entirely new theory of beauty. Beauty engages us in action, especially in concert with others, which is why aesthetic engagement is so important to quality of life and why it deserves lavish public support.