2024/05/29 by Emily Williamson · 1 voice
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · #Culinary Culture and Tourism
paper · doi:10.1093/aesthj/ayae027
openalex publication_date 2024/05/29 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
The Geography of Taste, co-authored by Dominic McIver Lopes, Samantha Matherne, Mohan Matthen and Bence Nanay, is published in the OUP series Thinking Art, and certainly fulfils the series’ professed goal to fill ‘an important gap in contemporary philosophy of art’. The key questions addressed in the book are those of why aesthetic values diverge so much across cultures and how we should engage aesthetically given this divergence. The consideration of culturally diverse aesthetic tastes is not limited to artworks. Instead, the authors intend to explore ‘diversity in aesthetic engagement, be it of artworks, nature, or everyday life’ (p. 9). They suggest that cultural differences cannot be wholly accounted for epistemically in terms of how much one knows about the history or traditions of a genre. Rather, culture also shapes emotional responses to artworks, and these affective differences are more difficult to explain (p. 6). The book is comprised of four independent papers. The first two (Matthen, Lopes) focus on descriptive questions such as why there is artistic difference across cultures and what exactly this difference consists of. The latter two (Matherne, Nanay) focus on the normative question of how agents should engage aesthetically given these cultural differences. The common current that ties these four papers together is their unanimous rejection of the traditional universalist view that predominated throughout the history of Western aesthetics (Hume, Hegel, Kant). The papers are book-ended by a clear and thorough introduction and a final dialogue between the four authors, summarizing their intentions in writing the book and forward-looking hopes for contemporary aesthetic research.