Cova et al. (2019) have tested people's beliefs on aesthetic disagreements using experimental studies based on questionnaires. Since the vast majority of participants chose answers that are incompatible with intersubjectivism, they conclude that the traditional approach in aesthetics is ”fundamentally misguided”. Contesi et al. (2024) claim that Cova et al. entirely misunderstand the relevance of their experimental findings to the aesthetics literature: those results actually ”confirm what aestheticians predicted all along”. According to Contesi et al., while aestheticians generally assume “that (...) people explicitly endorse the claim of subjectivism”, folk intersubjectivism ”is mainly seen as remaining implicit in patterns of behaviour”; its presence, therefore, cannot be inferred from people's ”explicit avowals”. Contesi et al. support their understanding of the literature by citing passages from contemporary philosophers. I argue that these passages fail to demonstrate that folk aesthetic intersubjectivism is regarded as implicit. (shrink)

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In this paper, I offer a new interpretation of Margaret Cavendish’s remarks on beauty. According to it, Cavendish takes beauty to be a real, response-independent quality of objects. In this sense, Cavendish is an aesthetic realist. This position, which remains constant throughout her philosophical writings, contrasts with the non-realist views that were soon after to dominate philosophical reflections on matters of taste in the early modern period. It also, I argue, contrasts with the realism of Cavendish’s contemporary, Henry More. While (...) there are passages in Cavendish’s work that might seem to count against my reading—specifically, passages on disagreement in aesthetic judgement, on the power of beauty to elicit the passions, and on our inability to specify the nature of beauty—I show that, when situated against the background of Cavendish’s broader metaphysical and epistemological views, those passages in fact support the realist interpretation. (shrink)

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