The concept of autonomy is central to many debates in aesthetics. However, exactly what it means to be autonomous in our aesthetic engagements is somewhat unclear in the philosophical literature. The normative significance of autonomy is also unclear and hotly debated. In this essay, I propose a method for clarifying this elusive concept by distinguishing three distinct senses or varieties of aesthetic autonomy: experiential autonomy, competence-based autonomy, and personal autonomy. On this taxonomy autonomy is a context-sensitive concept and autonomy applies to several different moments or stages of aesthetic appreciation. Throughout this critical discussion, important issues concerning the nature of aesthetic appreciation are also explored.

For cognitivist accounts of aesthetic appreciation, appreciation requires an agent (1) to perceptually respond to the relevant aesthetic features of an object o on good evidential grounds, (2) to have an autonomous grasp of the reasons that make the claim about the aesthetic features of o true by pointing out the connection between non-aesthetic features and the aesthetic features of o, (3) to be able to provide an explanation of why those features contribute to the overall aesthetic value of o. In this framework, aesthetic emotions have traditionally been confined to the level of aesthetic perception (1) and dismissed from the process of reason-giving (2, 3). I argue that this dismissal is due, firstly, to a questionable perceptual reading of the connection between emotional experience and value, and, secondly, to a narrow focus on the basic emotions. My argument will reveal that the non-standard or ‘intellectual’ emotions, the emotions which are in fact most important to appreciation, can play a significant epistemic role in our appreciative practices. They can do this because they (a) help us to deliberately focus our attention and (b) place the appreciator in a state of second-order awareness of their mental states. I conclude the paper by showing how these two epistemic tools (a, b) can help the appreciator to meet the explanatory/justificatory conditions (2) and (3).

There is a dimension of rationality, known as structural rationality, according to which a paradigmatic example of what it means to be rational is not to be akratic. Although some philosophers claim that aesthetics falls within the scope of rationality, a non-akrasia constraint prohibiting certain combinations of attitudes is yet to be developed in this domain. This essay is concerned with the question of whether such a requirement is plausible and, if so, whether it is an actual requirement of aesthetic rationality. Ultimately, this paper defends the view that aesthetics is no different from other domains in that it requires coherence between a subject’s mental states (in the aesthetic case, between what is judged and what is aesthetically liked). 

In our aesthetic life we regularly come across objects and practices the appreciation of which can lead to a radical change in our core aesthetic preferences. But how do we come to value items that are distant from those that we presently value? Is it rational to attempt such appreciation? Inspired by similar questions concerning the nature of transformative experiences, this essay explores the process by which one acts upon oneself to create a self with new aesthetic ideals. I begin by showing how aesthetic self-transformation involves a change in one’s perceptual and emotional sensibility. I then focus on two problems that arise in this context. First, how this revision can lead to an akratic-like mismatch between what is judged as aesthetically valuable and what is aesthetically liked. Second, how in attempting to resolve this conflict, we encounter two opposing aesthetic considerations that seem to guide aspirants with equal force: self-cultivation and aesthetic improvement. I propose that we explain the first issue by invoking a coherence requirement and resolve the second by outlining a hybrid view of what constitutes good aesthetic reasoning which takes into account considerations that have to do both with preserving one’s aesthetic identity and expanding one's aesthetic horizon.