A matter of taste? On the significance of aesthetic judgement for morality

ABSTRACT

It is clear that in everyday life, people and behavior patterns are frequently, or perhaps almost always, judged not in terms of good or bad, but with terms that belong more to the aesthetic, like appropriate and inappropriate. This means that in a situation where you would tend to expect moral judgement and moral behavior, it is in fact much more a question of style and, at best, self-respect that plays a role, not morality. As a result, the desired behavior is achieved more easily and more confidently. These observations might seem to undermine Kant’s account of the categorical imperative, but Kant, unlike Kierkegaard, for example, did not advocate a strict separation between ethics and aesthetics. Rather, as I demonstrate here, he showed an ethical interest in the formation of aesthetic taste. This disclosure is followed by a series of further reflections in moral philosophy that, among other things, take up Hegel’s distinction between the Customary and the Moral, and Foucault. By offering this new reading of Kant’s Critique of Judgement, my aim is to show that there are areas of ethics that are a matter of taste, and these are by far the most common.

KEYWORDS:

• Customary
• seriousness
• lifestyle
• morality
• taste

Acknowledgments

This article was originally published as “Geschmackssache? Über die Bedeutung des Geschmacksurteils in der Moral (A Matter of Taste? On the Significance of Aesthetic Judgement in Morality).” In Good Bad Taste, edited by Kai Buchholz. Darmstadt: FB Gestaltung – Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, 2015, p.66–70. It was translated into English by Janet Leyton-Grant and presented as the final lecture in the nine-part ATMOSPHERES lecture series sponsored by the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture, Concordia University, Montreal in the fall of 2020.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Gernot Böhme

Gernot Böhme studied Physics, Mathematics and Philosophy at the University of Hamburg, receiving his Ph.D. in 1965 and Habilitation in 1972 from the University of Munich. From 1977 to 2002 he was professor of philosophy at the Technical University of Darmstadt, and since 2005 he has been the Director of the Institute for Practicing Philosophy (www.ipph-darmstadt.de). He has published 70 books and more than 400 articles on subjects ranging from Classical Philosophy to Social Studies of Science, and from the Theory of Time to Ethics. His work on Aesthetics and the concept of “atmosphere” has been particularly influential in the English-speaking world. His publications in the latter area include: The Aesthetics of Atmospheres (Routledge 2017) and Atmospheric Architectures. The Aesthetics of Felt Spaces (Bloomsbury 2017).