Pessimistic aesthetics and the re-valuation of guilty pleasures: on the moral and metaphysical significance of escapism

ABSTRACT

There is a previously unrecognized coupling which underlies the Western evaluation of aesthetic experiences. By and large, we are taught that for our aesthetic pleasures to have any “value” (i.e. to be good) they must do more than merely entertain, distract, or delight. Instead, they should confront us with some “truth” about the nature of our existence and/or guide us to some “reality” concerning the state of our world. This paper asks: 1) whence this prejudice concerning the value of our aesthetic experiences? 2) What metaphysical and ethical assumptions underlie this epistemological standard? And, finally, 3) how might our expectations concerning the nature and value of aesthetic experiences alter if these assumptions are called into question, as they are, for example, by contemporary metaphysical pessimism? This paper uses the concept of “guilty pleasures” as a site to expose the history of our Western assumptions concerning the evaluation of aesthetic experiences and to explore how a pessimistic revaluation of reality might change our analysis of what comprises “good” art. To this end, this paper traces the origins of our aesthetic assumptions in the West, shows how these assumptions continue to influence our aesthetic expectations today, exposes the hidden metaphysical premises, which underly those expectations, and explores why and how we might call these premises into question through a pessimistic revaluation of existence. All of these supports, in the end, a critical reassessment of the status and value our so-called “guilty pleasures.”

KEYWORDS:

• Pessimism
• guilty pleasures
• escapism
• epistemology
• Kant
• Schopenhauer

The curious case of the guilty pleasure

There is something strange about the idea of “guilty pleasure,” especially those “guilty pleasures” which are deemed to be purely escapist, or allegedly frivolous. Whether a trashy beach read, a schlock pop-song, or a binge-worthy TV-series, it’s curious that something which is, at least presumably, the source of an immediate and spontaneous aesthetic pleasure, can become framed, post facto, as an object of shame. What’s especially odd about this posterior alchemy is not merely that it does happen, though that is odd enough, but the traditional reasons we give for its happening—its efficient cause, as it were. What is interesting about these so-called “reasons” is what they testify to concerning our inherited expectations concerning the value and function of aesthetic experiences (i.e. what makes “good art,” good) and what these expectations assume regarding the meaning and value of existence in general. The key to exposing this link between our aesthetic experiences and our metaphysical evaluations lies in uncovering what these reasons presuppose about what we think makes something shameful or guilty in the first place; for, the nature of our “guilty pleasures” is wholly unique in the realm of comparable affects.

After all, the guilt we take from such pleasures is rarely, if ever, due to any explicit ethical edict, moral prohibition, or even social and political disparagement which bans the aesthetic object itself or restricts our indulgence in it.¹ Rarely are our so-called “guilty pleasures” taboo, otherwise grocery store check-out-isle space-operas, Jimmy Buffett’s back catalog, and all six seasons of The Expanse wouldn’t be so readily available. The origin of the kind of “guilt” at issue here does not stem then from anything which is morally transgressive in their content, nor is it the allure of the forbidden which draws us to them or makes our indulgence in them somehow shameful.² Instead, the kind of “guilt” in question here, that “guilt” which we think “should” accompany our enjoyment of escapist “frivolities,” is, oddly, epistemological and, as I hope to show, ultimately metaphysical. In other words, this “guilt” stems from an expectation we have concerning the proper function of our aesthetic experiences; namely, that they should do more than merely entertain, distract, or delight us, but should instead confront us with some “truth” about the nature of our existence, and/or guide us to some “reality” concerning the state of our world. The allegedly “iniquitous” nature of our so-called escapist pleasures, then, is founded on a judgement that certain aesthetics experiences fail to meet to this obscure epistemological standard. The core problem with allegedly “guilty pleasures” of this kind, in other words, is our assessment that aesthetic experiences should direct us to reality and not divert or distract us from reality. The root of the alleged iniquity of these kinds of guilty pleasures is thus our judgement that our aesthetics experiences should be more than merely escapist, more than pure “flights of fancy,” but should instead be somehow instructive.

The questions I’d like to pursue here are threefold: 1) whence this epistemological prejudice concerning the value of our aesthetic experiences? Whence, in other words, this coupling of epistemological and metaphysical standards to aesthetic pleasure? 2) What hidden metaphysical and ethical assumptions underlie this coupling? And, finally, 3) how might our expectations concerning the nature and value of aesthetic experiences change if these assumptions are called into question and/or challenged, as they are, for example within contemporary pessimism? How, in other words, might a revision of these expectations change our expectations concerning aesthetics pleasures, challenge our expectations of what constitutes the goodness of art (not to mention what defines “good art”), and rescue us from what I hope to show is an unjustified judgement concerning the ultimate value of aesthetic pleasure?

In answer to these questions, I will first trace the origins of this mode of thinking in Western aesthetics; second, show how this mode of thinking continues to influence our aesthetic expectations today, even where we might expect to see it overturned; third, expose the hidden metaphysical assumptions which underlie these epistemological expectations; fourth, show why and how we might call these assumptions into question through a pessimistic revaluation of existence such that, finally, the status and value our so-called “guilty pleasures” can be reassessed. To begin, then, we must first turn our attention to a watershed moment in the intellectual history of the West—that moment in which the coupling of aesthesis to truth first appeared; namely, the collapse of the dominance of mythic narrative in the Mediterranean world around the 6^th century B.C.E.

The roots of our aesthetic prejudices

As has been extensively commented upon, perhaps most famously by Jan Bremmer and Albert Heinrichs, prior to the 6^th century B.C.E. the function of mythic narrative in the Mediterranean world was to construct a single coherent, if at times contradictory, accounting and repository of all that was, all that ever had been, all that might eventually become, and all that could even possibly be imagined.³ In this sense, mythos functioned for the early Mediterranean as a form of one-stop intellectual shopping, providing in its narratives ethical guidance, epistemological instruction, historical record keeping, tragic entertainment, and even more besides. For these reasons, mythos was regarded by the early Mediterraneans as simultaneously true and false, a source of useful instruction and a display of pure invention; intellectual illumination and outlandish entertainment, all rolled into one. Mythic narrative represented for them, in this regard, the one song of the world—a universal verse or cosmic hymn that carried within its melody the coherence of existence and non-existence alike and resolved within its singing truth and falsity, reality and invention, instruction and amusement. For these reasons, mythos was experienced by the early Mediterraneans as otherwise than, outside of, and beyond the bounds of our current genre distinctions, analytical categories, and evaluative expectations regarding the function of poetic objects and it contained within itself multitudes.

This was in large part, in fact, what inspired Socrates’ infamous quarrel with mythic poesis in the 5^th century B.C.E. For Socrates, as Plato makes clear, mythic narrative was all too inclusive to be of any functional value or practical use to its hearer, proliferating in its very form the confusion of truth and falsity, reality and invention, and therefore, he argued, even good and evil.⁴ Hence, his claim towards the conclusion of the Republic that if the Greek state is to flourish, mythic narrative must be stricken from public discourse and replaced with he calls the ordered and regulated logic of philosophical reasoning (Plato 2006, 595a, 419).

Interestingly, it was in part Socrates’ vilification and denunciation of the role mythic narrative in civic society that led to his eventual condemnation, trial, and conviction for impiety (a-sebeia) which was defined at the time as a form of irreverence with respect to, or rebellion against, the collective accord—an accord which, as a number of scholars have shown, was created and maintained by mythic narrative.⁵ For this reason, Socrates’ polemic against the function of mythic poesis in civil society was viewed by the general public as an attack on the very foundation of society itself!

Though he was unquestionably the first to openly campaign against its influence and power in the social and political sphere, this critique of mythic narrative did not begin with Socrates.⁶ By Socrates’ own account, this critique of mythic narrative first appears in the work of Parmenides of Elea, whom Plato frames as one of Socrates’ many teachers. Indeed, according to Socrates, one of the most significant contributions of Parmenides to the intellectual life of the Mediterranean was his radical break with the poetic mythos of Hesiod and Homer (Plato 2002, 152e, 43). And the nature of this break, Socrates explains, originates in Parmenides’ pioneering use of language (logoi) which opened the door, by Socrates account, for an entirely new way of thinking and being.

The uniqueness of Parmenides’ logoi as it was understood by Socrates is best demonstrated in the prologue to his proem On Nature (Ta Physis) where he distinguishes between what he calls the two ways, paths, or routes (poros) which he claims thought and language can traverse (Barnes 2001, 77–78). On the one hand, Parmenides states, language and thought can be guided along the path of public telling, or what he elsewhere terms common opinion (ta poros doxa)—a path which, as he makes clear, is maintained within mythic poesis (Barnes 2001, 85). The problem with this path however, as he posits it in his own poetic creation, is that it ultimately leads nowhere, as it charts a throughfare, which he depicts as constantly in flux, changing with each telling, and altering before every audience. As such, Parmenides concludes, this form and function of language is subject to difference, disparity, and controversy, or what he calls paradoxa (literally: a speaking which travels in two ways). By contrast, Parmenides proposes a path which he calls the way of truth (ta poros aletheia) (Barnes 2001, 80). This path, he suggests, yields a superior understanding of existence as it uses language in a way which is fixed, stable, and eternally unchanging, regardless of its teller or audience. For this reason, he concludes, it provides a more trustworthy passageway to reality itself, as it exists beyond the shifting sands of public opinion. Where Parmenides identifies the former path with the poesis of the mythic narratives, he identifies the latter path with what he calls the development of philosophical logic. In this way, Parmenides becomes the first person on record in Western thought to reduce the mode of mythic poesis, which up to that time had been considered the one source of both knowledge and entertainment alike, to something which from then on would be considered purely fictive and wholly false—nothing more than an escapist flight of fancy.⁷ Concomitant with this reduction, indeed by means of it, Parmenides was the first person in the history of Western thought to identify an alternative mode of regimented thinking and speaking, one which he claims is purified of such frivolity and is therefore not only epistemologically superior, but metaphysically and even morally superior: namely, logic.⁸

Socrates’ development of this new logoi was, in many ways then, nothing more than an expansion of Parmenides’ original linguistic and epistemological dualism, only now reinforced through a fully developed metaphysical dualism. Hence, Socrates’ identification of mythic poesis with what he sees as the fleeting realm of bodily pleasures—something which, by his account, leads exclusively in the way of all flesh (sarx) to what is ultimately transitory and illusory; and his ensuing identification of philosophical logic with the realm of what he calls the mind or soul (psyche), something which, he famously claims, is transcendent to the temporary realm of mere appearance and which leads, by virtue of its nature and operation alone, to the absolute realm of pure ideas (idea) or forms (eidos) and the eternal truth of being itself (kath auto).⁹

Through such a metaphysical dualism, Socrates’ concludes that every poetic object presents a kind of ontological juncture to its perceiver: either tethering them more firmly to the realm of that which is ultimately fleshy and false; or, alternatively, inspiring them to break with the realm of earthly appearances and perceptual illusions in order to seek and eventually to know the absolute truth of existence itself. Hence, again, Socrates’ infamous insistence that “an ancient quarrel exists between poetry and philosophy,” as well as his claim that there are reasonable grounds for expelling poetry from the public sphere and installing philosophers as kings over the civic good, not to mention his arguments that logic must be developed internally and should serve internally as the supreme adjudicator of our personal delights (Plato 2006, 607b, 465). Only through such a benevolent intellectual tyranny, as he sees it, can the state and, by virtue of it, our souls, become as ordered and regimented as a military unit (an allusion he makes to the ancient meaning of the word logoi as it was first employed by Parmenides).¹⁰ Failing such a regime change, Socrates thinks we are bound to be forever carried away, chaotically, hither and thither, by what he calls the “empty elegance,” of the “poetic praisers of Homer” (Plato 2006, 606e, 465).

It’s important to note here that Socrates’ condemnation of poetry is not a reproach against what he sees as the proper use and function of narrative invention and aesthetic creation full stop. To the contrary, as is well documented, Socrates himself regularly employs allegorical allusion and routinely engages metonymical devices in order to illustrate his logical claims (most famously, of course, in his allegory of the cave), and even confesses on his death bed that in many ways his life should have been dedicated to poetry (Plato 2001b, 60d, 211). His condemnation of poetic aesthesis is not directed against what we might think of today as poetics then—that is the forms or modes of creative structure and invention. Instead, his indictment of poetic aesthesis grows from what he sees as the improper use of those forms and modes. It is this improper use, he argues, which leads to what he sees as the creation of inferior aesthetic objects and thereby epistemological error, if not moral harm. This is a point which is made clearest in the Ion where the ethical consequence of the epistemic poverty of certain poetic performances is worked out in great detail (Plato 1997, 542a, 949).¹¹ For Socrates, as is clear there, the proper function of metonymical invention is to serve as a propaedeutic to reality. The legitimacy of poetic invention rests, in other words, he thinks, on its maieutic capacity. The problem with what he sees as purely poetic aesthesis is that it uses its clever devises solely to delight and/or entertain; and, in this regard, serves only to distract its audience from what is real when it should be didactically instructing them in what is true and therefore, presumably, good (Plato 2006, 595b, 419).

Devoid of such an epistemological or pedagogical aim, Socrates concludes, poetic creations inevitably carry their audience away from (ab) what is, ab-sconding with their attention, and ferrying them, upon feathered wing, as he describes it in the Phaedrus, away from reality when it should be prodding them towards the truth of being instead (Plato 2001c., 246a, 471 & ff.). Thus, whereas he sees the expressive language of purely poetic aesthesis as carrying us up, up, and away, to Aristophanes’ “cloud cuckoo land,” for example, a land governed by absolute fantasy and pure imagination alone, Socrates argues that the proper function of poetic invention is to help its hearer to confront and to know what is actually the case and to pull them out of the realm of entertainment, push them steadily up the steep slope of intellectual, and eventually deposit them in the clear and illuminative realm of the truth of being itself.

The continuity of the western condemnation of escapist aesthetics

It is in Socrates’ then that we discover the root of the coupling of epistemological expectations and aesthetic experiences which has since come to govern our standards and judgements of pleasure, to define our assumptions concerning what constitutes “good” art in contrast to “bad” or “empty” art, and to justify our prejudices that certain aesthetic pleasures are somehow lesser than, epistemologically impoverished, or “guilty” for their escapist line of flight. This coupling of epistemological function to aesthetic experience clearly does not end with Socrates, however. On the contrary, it is repeated almost without interruption throughout the subsequent history of Western thought, from the Medieval period, where a Christianized version of Plato’s ideals, refigured through a neo-Platonic lens, dominates accounts of the value of aesthetic experience, all the way through the Modern period, as we will see in more detail momentarily.¹² What is surprising, however, is that these same aesthetic prejudices are relatively uninterrupted even in the Contemporary, or Post-Modern world, precisely where we might expect to see them questioned, interrupted, or overturned.

Take for example Martin Heidegger’s 1927 Being and Time, which explicitly sought to “destruct” the legacy of Plato’s metaphysics within Western thinking; but which, nevertheless, relies upon the same basic distinctions (Heidegger 1962, 44 & 47–49). Indeed, a core element of Heidegger’s analysis there is his account of the difference between what he calls “idle talk,” (Gerede) and what he identifies as “authentic,” “true,” or “actual discourse” (eigentlich Rede)—a distinction which, we have to admit, appears to repeat the basic epistemological dualism of Socrates’ aesthetics (Heidegger 1962, 221, cf. 204). In fact, following Plato almost to the letter here, Heidegger states that his problem with Gerede is that it fails to uncover or disclose (erschliessen) what is true concerning the nature and structure of our being-in-the-world (Heidegger 1962, 212 & ff.). To the contrary, he argues, it functions to “cover over” (verdecken) what he calls “the truth of Being,” in such a way that its participants become “uprooted” (entwurzelt) from the world and begin to “float unattached” from reality as if “in einer Schwebe,” or a limbo state between being and non-being (Heidegger 1962, 214). Against this tendency, Heidegger identifies what he calls the disclosive power of philosophical “truth,” a mode of speaking which, incidentally, he links to the logoi of Parmenides and which he claims functions to reveal or disclose the primal reality of being itself (Heidegger 1962, 263 & 265). So it is that the same basic division made by Parmenides and Socrates between a mode of discourse which allegedly carries us away from reality and a mode speech which supposedly helps us to encounter reality is maintained by Heidegger, even where he claims to abandon the metaphysics which supports it.

Strangely, this same epistemological standard is doubled down on by Heidegger in his later and more explicitly aesthetic works where he claims to “turn” (kehre) even further from the traces he felt remained in his earlier works of the legacy of Plato’s metaphysics (1998, 249–250). Nevertheless, as is especially clear in his analysis of different modes of artistic creation in his essay on “The Origin of the Work of Art,” Heidegger goes to great lengths to distinguish between what he calls “false” art (pseudo Kunst) and “true” art (echte Kunst) (2002, 16–17 and; 1982, 29–34). To demonstrate the former, Heidegger identifies what he calls the “metaphysical verse,” of Rainer Maria Rilke; poetry, he argues there, which operates by “flowing away” from that which is and effects an “indeterminacy” in its reader which “alienates” them from the truth of being (1982, 151, 156, & 158). By contrast, Heidegger identifies what he calls the “true poetry” or “primordial verse,” of Friedrich Hölderlin which, he claims, “discloses the truth of being” (1982, 77 & ff.). In as much as it accomplishes this, Heidegger further claims, Hölderlin’s verse works alongside Parmenidean logic to reveal the true structure of existence. Hence his conclusion that despite his reliance on poetic invention, Hölderlin’s work is ultimately a form of “disclosive realism,” in contrast, he argues, to Rilke’s poetry which he identifies as a mode of “metaphysical escapism” (1982, 78 & 160).¹³

Interestingly, a similar polemic is repeated by Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno in their 1944 Dialectics of Enlightenment despite their explicit attempts to critique Heidegger’s metaphysics and aesthetics there and to distance themselves even further from the legacy of Western metaphysics initiated by Socrates than he had. Nevertheless, Horkheimer and Adorno rely on a similar aesthetic-epistemological dualism in their distinction between what they call “tame amusements,” and what they identify as “high art” (2002, 107 & 115; cf., 112–13). By their account, where the former works to distract their consumer from the conditions of reality by offering them a “surrogate satisfaction” for their unease in the world, the latter forces its consumer to actively confront the fundamental truths of their existence in a way that develops their class consciousness (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002, 116). Thus, where Horkheimer and Adorno identify the former, borrowing from the French, with sheer divertissement, pure fun or mere distraction, they identify the latter with what they call “de-aestheticized” art; art which, by their analysis, resists our desire to be carried away from reality and/or lulled into a placid or false ease with the social and political conditions of our being (2002, 103). So it is that we see here, yet again, a repetition of the basic framework of Plato’s epistemological evaluation of the function of poetic aesthesis.

But perhaps the quintessential example of this repetition of the Socratic coupling of epistemology to aesthetics in the history of Western thought can be found in the work of Immanuel Kant, the so-called apex and capstone of Modern thought in the West (Whitehead 1979, 39). It is in Kant that we find the most detailed expression of this coupling of aesthetics to epistemology and, by virtue of it, aesthetics to metaphysics as well. It is also in Kant, then, that we find the most complete articulation of the kind of thinking which gave rise to our contemporary conception of the “guilt” of certain aesthetic pleasures.

Kant and the apex of aesthetic realism

Kant’s coupling of epistemology to aesthetics is made clearest in his so-called 3^rd Critique, the 1790 Critique of the Power of Judgment. There, following the logical schema he developed in his 1^st Critique (the 1781 Critique of Pure Reason), Kant identifies a kind of scala aesthetica, which articulates three different levels of aesthetic experience. At the lowest level, Kant identifies what he calls the experience of the purely “agreeable,” or “pleasurable,” (das Angenehme) (2000, 95). Such aesthetic experiences arise, Kant claims, by captivating and delighting our “sensations” with something which, he writes, is simply “pretty,” merely “fun,” or exclusively “amusing” (2000, 91–94). In this regard, our pleasurable delights are grounded according to Kant in our bodily perceptions. For this reason, he concludes that our delectation in that which is “amusing” is bound to the singularity of our corporeal experiences and therefore limited to our own perceptions and personhood (Kant 2000, 97). As such, Kant claims that aesthetic experiences of this sort are structurally inferior to other modes of aesthetic engagement; for, he claims, they contain nothing which can be shared or which can carry us beyond ourselves and our experience of reality into the world as it exists for others, in a more universally objective form. Hence, Kant’s conclusion that the only appropriate sphere for such aesthetic pleasures is the privacy of the drawing room, or perhaps better still, the naivete of youth; certainly not, in any case, the court of mature public discourse. For Kant, only those pleasures which can be rationally justified outside the bounds of our singular bodily titillations, and which are therefore properly subject to universal appraisal and rational appreciation, are justifiable in the court of public appeal. For this reason, he identifies aesthetic experiences of this sort as structurally “higher” than those which are “merely” pleasurable (Kant 2000, 99).

Kant identifies such “higher” aesthetic experiences with anything which appeals to that which is universal in us (i.e. our reason) and which, as such, elevates us beyond our “private pleasurable amusements” into what he calls the realm of objective reality. For these reasons, he identifies the objects of such a transcendent pleasure truly “beautiful,” (das universell und echte Schön) (Kant 2000, 99–101). Such aesthetic objects, Kant claims, by appealing to “our cognitive capacity for rational comprehension,” possess an epistemological purposivity that merely pleasurable objects do not: namely, he thinks, they can teach us something about that which is true and/or right and good (2000, 102–103). Hence, his claim that “truly beautiful experiences” are not only a superior category of aesthetic engagement, but that they’re also an essential condition for the possibility of knowing reality as it presents itself to us and acting ethically within it (Kant 2000, 150). For these reasons, Kant argues that not only are such “higher” aesthetic experiences worthy of admission in the public sphere, but they are also best experienced there, in the company of fellow rational agents—those who can collectively, if dispassionately, admire their value in service to our collective pursuit of what is true, right, and good.

Beyond this second level of aesthetic experience, Kant famously identifies what he calls a “supreme,” “elevated,” or “sublime” (Erhabenen) experience (2000, 128). Such an aesthetic encounter, Kant writes, comes not from our capacity to rationally intuit reality, but rather from an uncanny perception of the noumenal structure of reality in-itself. As such, Kant identifies the affect associated with such experiences not with “pleasure,” nor even the “desireless purity of disinterested contemplation” which accompanies the truly beautiful; but, oddly, with something approaching terror (2011, 19–21). For Kant, the terrifying aspect of these encounters grows from their presentation of that which he identifies as “absolutely large,” either in “magnitude,” (for example, he notes, when one first realizes the enormity of the cosmos while stargazing), or “force,” (as can be experienced while caught shelterless while hiking along a mountain pass during a raging storm), or, alternatively, “transcendence,” (a feeling which he says is common during moments of religious exstasis or while doing complex mathematical computations) (2000, 128–140). Whatever its source, Kant identifies such sublime aesthetic experiences with an encounter with what he calls the “incomprehensible absolute,”—that which exists, he thinks, in and for itself alone, outside of and beyond our rational comprehension of reality: i.e. the full and true nature of being in-itself (2000, 133–134).

From this Kantian scala aesethica the Western coupling of aesthetic experiences to an epistemological encounter with reality, that coupling which began in the ancient Mediterranean world and continues to dominate our assumptions today, becomes clear. Our aesthetic pleasures are valuable and worthy of indulgence and public confession, we have been trained to think, only in as much as they function to teach us something which is “true” concerning the nature of reality and help us to ascend the ladder of perception towards the absolute form of being itself.¹⁴ And, only in as much as they work to accomplish this aim, we believe, can they be called good. The greater the representative power of some truth of being, it therefore follows, the better the aesthetic value of the experience and the more willing we are to admit the pleasure we take in it. Conversely, the less representative an aesthetic experience is of some absolute, universal, or transcendental truth, the more shame and guilt we tend to take from our indulgence in it and the more privately we feel we must safeguard our delight in it. It is from this chain of reasoning that our guilty pleasures are born. Hence as well our prejudices concerning what allegedly distinguishes the so-called “noble” or “high” arts from their “lower” and “lesser” cousins, not to mention our assumptions concerning what defines “good art” and distinguishes it from “bad art.” Art is “good,” “noble,” or “high,” we think, when it presents something that is true or real. Only this, we believe, is what makes it worthy of our time, attention, and validates it as a topic of public discourse. Thus, the epistemological link between our evaluation of aesthetic experiences and metaphysics is laid bare.

The metaphysics of aesthetic realism

The problem with this unexamined epistemological standard at the heart of Western aesthetics is that it inherits a hidden ethical evaluation which lies at the very core of Western metaphysics; namely, the belief that there is something inherently good or valuable about the nature of reality—something which makes it worth knowing and assures us that our confrontation with it is beneficial and morally praiseworthy. In other words, the Western pairing of epistemological expectations to aesthetic experience assumes, without justification, that the truth of existence is something which deserves our attention and which we rightly ought to know. It is this ethically infused metaphysics which underlies our coupling of epistemology and aesthetics in the West and grounds our sense that anything which does not help us to know and/or to confront the “true nature of reality”—anything which, in other words, diverts or distracts us from or helps to evade and/or escape that reality—is not only epistemologically empty and aesthetically questionable, but is also culpable or “guilty.”

To put it another way, the classical coupling of aesthetics to epistemology stems from a simultaneous coupling of metaphysical speculation and ethical evaluation which assumes that what is is necessarily good (a coupling which, it should be noted, was first proposed by Parmenides and Socrates). It is this more primordial meta-ethical coupling of being and goodness which informs our sense that aesthetic objects should do more than merely delight us, and definitely should not distract us from reality, but should instead teach us something about the nature of being. Indeed, it is for this very reason that Socrates concludes that “the unexamined life was not worth living,” and that any poetic object which does not help us to examine our lives should be prohibited from public consumption; and, if admitted at all, should restricted exclusively to the realm of the shamefully private (Plato 2001a, 38a, 133).

But, and here’s the rub, what if it turns out that this long-held metaphysical coupling of existence to moral value, and the subsequent coupling aesthetic experience to epistemological function, is wrong? What if, in other words, the metaphysical foundation which supports this union are fraudulent, and not only is the “unexamined life not worth living,” as Socrates put it, but the examined life turns out to be “a clunker, too,” as Kurt Vonnegut has it (1981, 182)? What if reality is wholly evil, entirely repugnant, and morally reprehensible? Would we then still have a moral obligation to know it? Or would the height of ethical duty and the ultimate accomplishment of aesthetic experience be the evasion of reality? What sort of aesthetic claims might such an inversion of the classical meta-ethical assumptions surrounding the moral value of being yield?

Metaphysical pessimism, in a nutshell

Such a pessimistic suspicion of the value of being has grown in popularity of late as the contemporary sciences have exposed the seemingly intractable nature of destruction inherent to existence as we all become more aware of our complicity in that destruction (e.g. climate disasters, the so-called Anthropocene, etc.) (see, for example, Dalton 2023; Scruton 2010, 229 & ff.). As a result, a growing number of contemporary thinkers have come to reject the classical metaphysical assumptions of Parmenides and Socrates in favor of a radically new mode of “metaphysical” or “cosmic” pessimism (see, for example, Thacker 2018, 9–10). This new turn to pessimism in contemporary thought is more than a reflection of some gloomy disposition which appears to be haunting us today. It is instead a radical revolution of the intellectual assumptions which have dominated Western thought since the 6^th century B.C.E. onwards. As such, it is a movement which demands the critical re-evaluation of the epistemological divisions, ethical evaluations, and aesthetic judgements which we have just seen were established upon those foundations.

To see how this pessimistic overturning of these foundations might transform our understanding of the function and value of our aesthetic encounters in general, and, in doing so, help us to redeem our so-called “guilty pleasures” as not only an acceptable mode of aesthetic indulgence, but also perhaps even a superior one, it is incumbent on us to familiarize ourselves with the “metaphysical” nature of this pessimistic revolution in thought.

The heart of this “metaphysical” pessimism is summarized neatly in the claim that existence is a morally evil force—or, in the words of David Benatar, echoing Sophocles, that it is not good to be and it would have been better “never to have been born” (Benatar 2006). It is this condemnation of more than merely one particular way of being (say “bad” ways of being, the Western way of being, or even the human way of being, etc.), but rather of being itself which makes contemporary pessimism truly “metaphysical” in scope (Dienstag 2006, 84 & ff.). Emil Cioran’s makes this metaphysical turn in contemporary pessimism especially clear in his hyperbolic equivalence of “existence” to “torment” (Cioran 2012b, 116). Such a seemingly grandiose axiom is justified, he claims, by simple scientific observation alone—that is, by the fact that “[e]verything [in existence] conspires, elements and actions alike, to harm you” (Cioran 2012a, 38). By his read, “[e]very individual discomfort [can ultimately be causally traced] back to a cosmogonic discomfort,” which grows from “the primordial [moment in] which Being crept [out of nothingness]” (Cioran 2012b, 16). So it is, by Cioran’s read, that every discrete harm which we can suffer in life, or indeed which anything at all, whether biological or merely chemical, can suffer, from sickness, aging, and death, on the one hand, to rust, rot, and ruin, on the other, is not the result of some stupid accident of history, but is absolutely essential to and necessitated by the very structure of being itself. From this we might neatly summarize the metaphysical nature of contemporary pessimism with the words of Kurt Vonnegut once again: “Life,” he writes, and not just life, but perhaps even being itself, “is simply no way to treat an animal, and not just people,” he notes, “but pigs and chickens too.” It all “just hurts too much,” he concludes definitively (Vonnegut 2013, 98). Such is the conclusion of contemporary metaphysical pessimism as well.

From this brief introduction, it should be clear that as a movement contemporary metaphysical pessimism is more than a simple reversal of the unquestioned optimism of classical Western metaphysics, as if exchanging darkness for light, evil for good, or negativity for positivity. Instead, it is the radical subversion of every one of our unquestioned assumptions and expectations concerning the order and operation of reality itself, including our aesthetic experiences and epistemological expectations. As such, it is an intellectual movement which demands that we constitutionally re-evaluate the ways in which we conceive of and judge our experience of reality—especially, in this case, how we conceive of, judge, and evaluate our engagement with objects of aesthetic power. For if existence is primordially revolting and abhorrently evil, indeed the very ground and condition for the suffering of everything which is, then why would we have a moral or epistemological obligation to know it, much less expect our aesthetic experiences to reflect it or guide us to it? To the contrary, if metaphysical pessimism is right, then precisely the opposite should be true: not only might we have a moral obligation to evade and escape reality at every turn, we would moreover have an ontological need to divert our attention from existence simply in order to survive it from one day to the next; or, as it the great troubadour of contemporary escapism, Jimmy Buffett, frames it, we wouldn’t “just enjoy our escapisms—we[‘d] NEED them” (2004, 457). So it is that if metaphysical pessimism is right, we would have to reconsider and reconceive the value and function of our so-called “guilty” pleasures not only as morally valuable, but even as an existential necessity. But such a revaluation can only be accomplished by first uncoupling aesthetic experience from epistemology. Fortunately, we have an indispensable ally for effecting this divorce: Arthur Schopenhauer, the first figure of modern metaphysical pessimism.

The foundation of Schopenhauer’s philosophical system is the speculative claim that existence is essentially, absolutely, and intractably evil; a fact which, he concludes, demands the radical revision of the various ways in which we have historically ordered and judged the function of our understanding of the world, chiefly, he notes, our relation to aesthetic experiences (Schopenhauer 2012, 444). To this end, Schopenhauer argues that what a pessimistic assessment of the value of being demands is that a new standard be erected by which we should measure and judge the value of poetics objects; namely, whether and to what extent, in the words of the 18^th century English essayist Samuel Johnson, they effectively empower us “to better enjoy life, or to better endure it” (Johnson 2009, 528).

Schopenhauer’s pessimistic inversion of classical aesthetics

With this standard as his guide, Schopenhauer begins his pessimistic revaluation of the order and nature of aesthetic experience. This he does, interestingly, not by addressing Plato or Socrates directly, whom he suggests are too distant from us historically to be of any real concern, but by calling into question what we identified as Kant’s scala aesthetica, whome he saw as not only the ultimate torchbearer of Socrates’ metaphysics, but also the most expansive expression of the epistemological ideals it established for the subsequent history of philosophy. In this regard, Schopenhauer’s work can in many ways be read as presenting a kind of subverted, anti, or “dark” mode of Kantianism—a Kantianism filtered through the dim pallor of a pessimistic metaphysics.¹⁵

Indeed, Schopenhauer begins his revision of the metaphysical and epistemological assumptions of our world precisely by perverting Kant’s scala aesthetica: not ranking and ordering the value of aesthetic experiences according to their epistemological function as a conduit to reality; but, precisely the opposite, by evaluating them according to what he sees as their existential utility in helping us to evade and escape reality (Schopenhauer 2010, 198 & 220). Thus, whereas Kant identifies purely pleasurable or agreeable objects as the lowest form of aesthetic experience and impediments to moral development, Schopenhauer identifies in them as essentially good (Schopenhauer 2010, 225). Indeed, according to Schopenhauer, in as much as such objects can help us to escape, however momentarily, the otherwise monotonous horror of our everyday lives, they should not only be praised, but also actively and enthusiastically enjoyed and regularly indulged in. To exemplify such “charming,” or “stimulating” pleasures, as he calls them, Schopenhauer rhapsodizes the small comfort we might take from a late afternoon sweet treat of jam and cookies, or the simple amusement we can find in a well dropped bon mote or joke (Schopenhauer 2010, 232). Schopenhauer’s take on the value of such pleasurable amusements is perfectly expressed then in Woody Allen’s quip that even if reality is no place to live, “it is still the only place to get good chicken wings” (Allen 2020, 375). In as much as these momentary titillations help us to endure and enjoy the quotidian terrors of reality by transforming the otherwise mundane into something which can momentarily distract us from the horror of reality, he thinks, such simple pleasures, like chicken wings, are not only inherently valuable, but also they are, in fact, morally necessary (Schopenhauer 2010, 333–334 & 405)! Indeed, he concludes, the only reason we might evaluate such pleasures as somehow “lesser than” or “aesthetically inferior” to other modes of poetic production is that their power to distract us from the horrors of reality are all too transitory and episodic. In other words, the only reason Schopenhauer thinks we might want to evaluate such pleasures as somehow “lower” is simply because they are not as effective as other forms of aesthetic experience at helping us to escape the atrocity of existence.

In light of their relative fragility, Schopenhauer, like Kant, thus esteems as “higher” what he calls objects of “beauty” (2010, 225). Note, however, that his estimation of the relative superiority of these experiences is not a consequent of some assessment of their epistemological power, as it is by Kant. Instead, he claims, their superiority grows from the relative power with which they help us to evade and/or escape reality in a deeper way and for a longer duration. Their relative superiority is thus solely for him a consequent of their greater efficacy at occupying our attention and distracting us more completely from the monstrosity of being, and in this way of “purifying,” as he puts it, our existence from suffering (Schopenhauer 2010, 234). This they do, he thinks, not by transforming objects of existence into something momentarily delightful, as lesser pleasures do, but by inviting us to suspend entirely our experience of existence, if only momentarily, through the inspiration of our imaginations which, he argues, functions to carry us beyond the limits of reality. In this way, he argues, beauty is the experience of finding oneself temporarily whisked away from existence and caught up for a brief spell in a fictive or false reality—in other words, something which, technically, isn’t at all. So it is, Schopenhauer argues that the experience of beauty arises from a temporary suspension of or respite from the torments of existence whereby the subject is transported into a limbo state wherein, seemingly impossibly, they are relieved of their being and can exist, as it were, outside the terrible constraints of existence itself (2010, 236–237). Such a momentarily nihilation of being is perfectly exemplified in Denis Diderot’s account of what he called “art at its most magical,” an experience which he claims to have had while contemplating a series of landscapes by the painter Claude-Joseph Vernet which was on display at the Paris Salon of 1767 (Diderot 1995; Schiller 2016). “Where am I at this moment?” he writes of his fleeting exstasis, “What is all this surrounding me? I don’t know, I can’t say. What is lacking? Nothing. What do I want? Nothing. If there is a God, his being must be like this, taking pleasure in being free of desire” (Diderot 1995, 98). The relative superiority of the experience of beauty for Schopenhauer lies in its capacity to open such a path and to impart an impermanent ecstatic relief from the ontological aggression of being which allows us to perceive, as if through a glass dimly, the potential perfection of absolute oblivion.

Greater than this alone Schopenhauer identifies what he too calls the sublime (2010, 226). But whereas the sublime for Kant arises from some allegedly transcendental encounter with being in-itself, Schopenhauer argues that the sublime emerges from, precisely the opposite, some approximation of a perfect escape from being itself; i.e. the possibility of the purity of a perfect nihilation of being in every form (2010, 232 & 259). In other words, Schopenhauer regards the sublime as a foretaste of death: the ultimate escape from existence. As such, Schopenhauer identifies in our experience of the sublime the possibility of discovering a new way of living in reality; namely, in anticipation of, preparation for, and practice of death (2010, 394 & 408–409). Examples of such a sublime lifestyle, Schopenhauer claims, are very rarely seen in civil society. They are much more often found, he suggests, in the cultivated extasis of the mystic philosopher and/or the ascetic sage who has committed themselves fully to the path of mendicancy and meditation in anticipation of their eventual release from the bonds of being; or, perhaps, more commonly today, in the glorious joy and horror of the catatonic, the manic spinning and dancing of the consumer of psychedelics, or the disheveled rapture and terror of the psychotic.

From this brief survey of Schopenhauer’s pessimistic subversion of Kant’s scala aesthetica it should be clear that, from a pessimistic perspective, the aim of aesthetic experience is definitively not to confront the truth of reality, nor is it to know the nature of our existence. It is instead to provide an efficient means of escaping our existence and evading our reality by any and every means necessary and as efficiently and completely as possible; or, as Schopenhauer put it, of “tranquilizing” the experience of reality in anticipation of its ultimate extinction (2010, 280 & 334). In as much as an aesthetic experience distracts us in this way from the onslaught of being and allows us to find relief from its persistent aggressions, the pessimist concludes, it should be praised and indulged in at every opportunity, regardless of its epistemic function.

Indeed, Schopenhauer extolls the value of our aesthetic pleasures precisely for how they help us to evade and escape the “truth” of being (2010, 232). In other words, he values them not in spite of their epistemological paucity, but precisely because of it! For Schopenhauer, the aesthetic superiority of aesthetic pleasures thus grows directly from their effective capacity to help us abjure and escape the fundamental truth of reality: the fact that it is exhausting to be, and never over soon enough.

The existential value of escapism

One might expect an appropriately pessimistic aesthetics of this sort to yield a kind of poetic heaviness-one which accurately reflects the horrifying conditions of reality itself as it presents itself to us. This expectation fails to acknowledge however just how radically metaphysical pessimism unsettles the epistemological coupling established in classical Western metaphysics—for it is an expectation which grows from the Socratic assessment that the primary function of aesthetic experiences is to show us and/or guide us to the truth of being. Since contemporary pessimism calls for the de-coupling of ethical goodness from metaphysical reality, and therefore aesthetics from epistemology, a truly pessimistic aesthetics would favor instead objects of artistic creation which might more effectively distract us and protect us from the otherwise overwhelming melancholic pallor of reality. In this regard, a truly pessimistic aesthetics would champion the creation of whatever mode of poesis might help its reader, hearer, watcher, etc. to escape the slings and arrows of our outrageous misfortune, if only for a half hour to an hour weekly.

In this regard, a truly pessimistic aesthetics would not yield the kind of dark melancholia which Eugene Thacker, for one, sees exemplified in heavy metal, tales of cosmic horror, the graphic cosmologies of Robert Fludd, and the chiaroscuro of Caravaggio’s paintings (2015, 48 & ff.). To the contrary, I would argue that such “dark arts,” are not truly pessimistic at all, but ultimately the consequent of a kind of disappointed or disenchanted ontological optimism. Against Thacker, then, I would argue that the product of a truly pessimistic aesthetics is more readily found, perhaps ironically, in aesthetic experiences which are light, airy, pleasant, and frivolous; or, purely entertaining and utterly escapist.

Shirley Jackson the great mid-century writer of speculative fiction began her exploration of the horror of existence in The Haunting of Hill House with the observation that “no conscious organism can continue for long to exist sanely under the conditions of absolute reality” (2006, 1). If the pessimistic revaluation of reality is correct, then the sole function of artistic creation is to help us to evade and escape these conditions of absolute reality by crafting effective flights of fancy in which we can take shelter, if only momentarily. Or, to put it even more simply, borrowing the words of Jimmy Buffett once again, given the nightmare of existence, “if we couldn’t laugh we would all go insane” (1977). From a pessimistic perspective, the aim of aesthetics is to help us to laugh in this way, despite the conditions of our existence—to giggle with pleasure at what delights us, not because it teaches us anything meaningful about the nature of our being, but precisely because it doesn’t; because it helps us to endure its horrors by giving us permission to smile in spite, and perhaps because of the gallows that forever hang before us.

If the pessimistic re-valuation of being is correct, then we can only conclude that it is the moral duty of art to liberate us in this way, however fleetingly, from the misfortune of having been born, and to help us to whistle in the darkness of our days and to escape the eldritch terrors of our nights by producing utterly idiotic schlock. In this way, a truly pessimistic aesthetics enjoins us to appreciate the value of our frivolous pleasures more deeply and to indulge in our fiddling flights of fancy more fully, not merely as morally justified escapes from reality, but as existentially necessary palliatives against the misery of existence. In this way, metaphysical pessimism redeems our so-called “guilty pleasures” from their alleged iniquity and empowers us shout our puerile amusements from the rooftops and even to subject them to the kind of public scrutiny and academic analysis which has traditionally been deemed wholly inappropriate to them.¹⁶

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. An exploration of the possible link between normative regulations and the experience of guilty pleasure can be found in Goffin and Cova (2019).

2. This is a conclusion supported by Melinda Reid who sees a certain level of ironic distance or critical skepticism at the heart of the experience of our so-called “guilty pleasures.” For more see Reid (2022).

3. See, for example, Bremmer (1987) & Henrichs (2019).

4. For more on the status of myth in Plato and Socrates see, for example, Edelstein (1949).

5. See, for example, Bremmer (2019) and D’Alessio (2009).

6. For more on the development of logos from, and in contrast to, myth in the ancient Greek world see Nestle (1940).

7. This is a position made clear in Stapelfeldt (2006).

8. For more on Parmenides and the birth of logic see, for example, Austin (1986) and Stannard (1960).

9. See, for example, Socrates presentation of this progression in Plato (2006), 509d-510a, 109. For more on the contrast between myth and logic in Plato see Figal (2008), 187–188.

10. For more on the ancient root of the word logoi see, for example, Reames (2013).

11. For more on this theme in the Ion see Svoboda (2021).

12. For a more detailed account of the continued influence of Platonic and neo-Platonic thinking in Western aesthetics a number of excellent sources exist. See, for example: Alexandrakis (2002), Hendrix and Cheney (2004), or Lobsein and Olk (2012).

13. For more on Heidegger’s account of the differences between Hölderin and Rilke’s poetry see: Heidegger (1971).

14. This is position which is made explicit in Friedrich Schiller’s On the Aesthetic Education of Man.

15. Schopenhauer in fact attributes his interest in the power and function of aesthetic transcendence to Kant. See, for example, Schopenhauer (2010), 560 & ff.

16. Even in popular culture studies, where “guilty pleasures” appear to be redeemed from their traditional status and re-valuated as objects of cultural importance, the link established by the history of Western thought connecting the value of aesthetic objects to their epistemological function is still upheld. A good example of this can be found by surveying the kinds of articles published in the Professional Wrestling Studies Journal where the antics of the arena are esteemed for laying bare everything from the conscience of the contemporary voter to the voyeuristic and violent pleasures of late-stage consumer culture. In this way, this popular and presumably “low” cultural artifact is valued exclusively for what it allegedly reveals about the state of the contemporary world.