The Aesthetic Value of the World

In The Aesthetic Value of the World, Tom Cochrane defends Aestheticism, the claim that everything is aesthetically valuable and that a life lived in pursuit of aesthetic value can be a particularly good one. Furthermore, in distilling aesthetic qualities, artists have a special role to play in teaching us to recognize values; a critical component of virtue. Cochrane grounds his account upon an analysis of aesthetic value as 'objectified final value', which is underwritten by an original psychological claim that all aesthetic values are distal versions of practical values. This is followed by systematic accounts of beauty, sublimity, comedy, drama, and tragedy, as well as appendix entries on the cute, the cool, the kitsch, the uncanny, the horrific, the erotic, and the furious.

Tom Cochrane, Lecturer in Philosophy, Flinders University

Tom Cochrane studied philosophy at University College London, before completing an MA in music composition at Birmingham Conservatoire and a PhD in philosophy at the University of Nottingham. Following his PhD, Cochrane held postdoctoral research positions at the University of Geneva and Queen's
University Belfast. He was then a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Sheffield and the University of York before joining Flinders University in 2018. His main areas of expertise are the philosophy of emotions and related issues in psychology, extended and collective cognition, and
aesthetics.