Aesthetics: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Working from the articles in the link, the Pugsters talk about aesthetics—the philosophical field focused on questions of beauty and taste. Rather than beauty being purely in the eye of the beholder, the guys agree that beauty is objective and rooted in the transcendence of God. And that means that there is a right and wrong way to respond to beauty or the lack thereof. In this way, aesthetics is a moral issue. From there, the Pugsters explore a variety of ways that beauty is defiled, whether from viewing art as a means to shock or to produce intentional ugliness, or from kitsch, commercialism or utilitarianism, or from twisting it to support ideologies. The last is on full display in the program for the Tolkien Society’s Summer seminar this year, also linked below. https://hedgehogreview.com/blog/thr/posts/more-than-a-matter-of-taste?fbclid=IwAR3iV1ACuKg2Yv05RFI-DuLQa2jKseLYrmW3bn0OYVx_Iq1AAiSkeJpI8ck