Author Date

2026-03-26

Degree Name

Department

Philosophy

College

Humanities

Defense Date

2026-02-27

Publication Date

2026-03-26

First Faculty Advisor

Dr. Derek Haderlie

Second Faculty Advisor

Dr. Ryan Davis

First Faculty Reader

Dr. Justin White

Honors Coordinator

Dr. Ryan Christensen

Keywords

aesthetics, philosophy, philosophy of art, contemporary philosophy

Abstract

Wish-fulfillment in aesthetic works is often looked down upon. It may strike us as cheapening the work or the narrative of an artwork. Does this intuition correspond to some real aesthetic shortcoming, or does it collapse into a kind of aesthetic snobbery? Common theories of aesthetic value will fail to properly explain why we might take issue with wish-fulfillment in aesthetic works. This thesis has two aims. First, I will examine what constitutes wish-fulfillment in aesthetic works and provide a definition of its essential features. This definition will illuminate an important insight, namely, that wish-fulfillment interferes with our ability to aesthetically engage with narrative artworks. Further, I will provide an explanation of theories of aesthetic value focused on engagement, and argue that they provide us with strong reasons to believe that wish-fulfillment constitutes a bad-making feature of aesthetic works. This leads us to my second aim: to point out the rich explanatory power of these engagement-focused theories of aesthetic value. The debate over what theory of aesthetic value should take precedence is a live one in the literature, and I aim to provide further evidence for the favorability of engagement-focused theories of aesthetic value. Where hedonistic and classical theories of aesthetic value will fail to facilitate us with the explanatory power we may desire for a theory of aesthetic value, engagement-focused theories will succeed.