ABSTRACT
Narratives of recovery from periods of mental suffering such as depression and melancholy will sometimes point to the positive benefits of having experienced mental suffering once the person has recovered from it. A less-theorised theme in accounts of recovery from mental suffering concerns primarily aesthetic rather than moral characteristics. Accounts of a change in the person’s perception of the material world during recovery from a period of mental suffering are not limited to the experiences William James finds in cases of religious conversion. The chapter shows a relatively simple and modest claim: that, in depression recovery, some people experience a heightened appreciation of beauty. The recovery state is not simply a reversion to a ‘normal’ appreciation of beauty is arguably also implicit in the accounts which focus on remarkably mundane things as being beautiful.
