What place do experiences of beauty have in a meaningful life? A marginal one, at best, it would seem, if one looks at the current literature in analytic philosophy. Treatments of beauty within so-called “analytic existentialism” tend to suffer from four limitations: beauty is neglected, reduced to artistic production, saddled to theology, or taken as a mere application of a broader theoretical framework. These discussions fail to engage with the rich tradition of philosophical aesthetics. In this essay, I begin by responding to the contention that experiences of beauty cannot lend life meaning because they are passive. Drawing on work in philosophical aesthetics, I then argue that encounters with the beautiful count as genuinely meaning-conferring because they have features commonly taken as marks of meaningfulness.

中文翻译：

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意义与美

美的体验在有意义的生活中占有什么位置？如果一个人看一下当前的分析哲学文献，它充其量只是边缘的一个。在所谓的“分析存在主义”中对美的处理往往受到四个限制：美被忽视，被简化为艺术创作，被神学所束缚，或者被视为更广泛的理论框架的单纯应用。这些讨论未能涉及哲学美学的丰富传统。在这篇文章中，我首先回应了这样一种论点，即美的体验不能赋予生命意义，因为它们是被动的。借鉴哲学美学方面的工作，我然后认为与美丽的相遇算作真正的意义赋予，因为它们具有通常被视为有意义标志的特征。