ABSTRACT
Occupying a central position in this realist theory of art (and the book’s 10 chapters), attention now turns to “value” and “axiological experience”. Axiology is the study of value and valuation. It is argued that our capacity for emergent experiences of being-in-relation with the real plays an integral role in how we come to value anything. The chapter focuses on our relational being, approach-avoid motivation and (emotional) valency. Experience is theorised as a distinctive emergent form of energy. I offer a dispositional realist account of value. According to this theory, the world contains a priori forces or powers, i.e., forms of energy that constitute “natural necessity”; but values only exist because we have the capacity to experience these through our aesthetic (axiological) experience. The implications of this theory are wide-reaching, including how we might understand Kant’s central pre-occupation with aesthetic “disinterestedness”.
