2025/06/13 by Karl Axelsson · 1 voice
Psychology · #Creativity in Education and Neuroscience
paper · doi:10.1093/aesthj/ayaf015
openalex publication_date 2025/06/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Disagreements about well-known facts and established knowledge are a vis vitalis of post-factual politics. Facts and knowledge themselves are not necessarily irrelevant, but the relevance is determined by emotional impact. Policy makers and parts of the general public seem to be less interested in whether, for instance, crime statistics are up or not, but increasingly interested in whether people feel as if crime statistics are up. We are, as Ole Martin Skilleås argues in Aesthetic Expertise. An Exploration and Defense, witnessing a ‘broad populist movement’ that honours ‘subjective opinion, often at the expense of established knowledge’ (p. 1). No academic discipline remains unaffected by the current wave of anti-expertise, not even aesthetics. Integral parts of aesthetic expertise—whether it be knowledge, training, or specific competency—are frequently pitted against what Skilleås refers to as ‘popular immediacy’. Popular immediacy is not a theory as much as a ‘motley collection of beliefs’ (p. 2). As such, its fickle nature is what makes it persistent and frequently produces an ‘instinctive opposition against the idea that skill and knowledge, and thus competency and expertise, should play a part in aesthetic matters’ (p. 3). While dismissing expertise in epistemic matters or applying a private moral standard in conflict with laws, regulations, and social conduct usually comes with a great deal of problems, taste is quite a different matter. Skilleås positions his overall argument of the book precisely in the frequent tension that arises from an assumed need of ‘aesthetic expertise justifying a standard of taste in the tradition of Hume’ and the fact that such a standard, at the same time, remains ‘key to individuation’ (p. 105). Hence, the current political and cultural features of popular immediacy function as a general contextual cause that motivates Skilleås’ plea for sense and sensibility in an age where the binary between subjective emotions and rationality seems to widen by the minute. In four lucidly argued chapters, Skilleås elaborates on the key reasons why aesthetic expertise is both indispensable and contested today.