On Snobbery

British Journal of Aesthetics 63 (2):199-215 (2023)
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Abstract

This is a paper about the nature of snobbery and the undermining import of a charge of snobbery. On my account, snobs sincerely attempt to identify and correctly evaluate the aesthetically relevant features of an object, but they get things wrong, and their getting things wrong is explained by the fact that they under-value that which they associate with being lower-class. We can see the need for this account by reflecting on examples, and can distinguish it from existing accounts of snobbery by thinking about when and why evidence of snobbery constitutes higher-order evidence against one’s aesthetic judgements. Existing accounts either are consistent with snobs’ aesthetic judgements being flawless, and thus not undermined by evidence of snobbery, or they imply that the canonical reasoning-process for arriving at aesthetic judgements has been bypassed altogether. On my account, by contrast, snobbery does not bypass the canonical aesthetic reasoning-process but distorts it in systematic and predictable ways.

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Author's Profile

Zoë Johnson King
Harvard University

Citations of this work

Aesthetic Normies and Aesthetic Communities.Ting Cho Lau - 2024 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (N/A):1-10.
Aesthetic Normies and Aesthetic Communities.Ting Cho Lau - 2024 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 82 (4):407-417.
Aesthetic Snobbery.Stephanie Patridge - 2023 - Philosophy Compass 18 (9):e12940.
Failure as Omission: Missed Opportunities and Retroactive Aesthetic Judgements.Elisabeth Schellekens - 2023 - Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics 60 (2):131-144.

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References found in this work

Epistemology of disagreement: The good news.David Christensen - 2007 - Philosophical Review 116 (2):187-217.
Doxastic deliberation.Nishi Shah & J. David Velleman - 2005 - Philosophical Review 114 (4):497-534.
Of the Standard of Taste.David Hume - 1985 - Liberty Fund. Edited by E. Miller.
The aim of belief.Ralph Wedgwood - 2002 - Philosophical Perspectives 16:267-97.

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