How aesthetics, ethics and metaphysics are part of everything we do and say

Let’s define our terms.

Aesthetics is the discipline that concerns itself with questions of perception and how things fit together to either achieve or fail to achieve a feeling ranging from simple satisfaction to the most intense experience of beauty.

Ethics is the discipline that concerns itself with questions about the intentions, rightness and consequences of our actions so that they may be judged, good, right or for the best. And because actions are as means are intentional, ethics also concerns itself with the ends they achieve.

Metaphysics concerns itself with the question of how to speak usefully and reliably about the world and our place in it.

To me the argument, be it implicitly, is already made.

Let’s make it explicit. If these disciplines can be reasonably defined as such (and I think they can but I would be happy to hear compelling arguments to the contrary) then any doing (which includes any saying) we accidentally perform must be judged according to the above questions, whilst any intentional doing (which also includes any saying) must be prepared and judged according to those same questions.

Let’s test the idea using an everyday event.

“Mum, I want pizza”, “Hmmm.. are you sure that is a good idea?”

The intelligibility of the two sentences making intentionality possible engages with metaphysics. The wanting and questioning of that desire measuring it against ideas of the good engages with ethics. And the fitting of the words into composed sentences and the measuring of the ideas against standards of the good (norms and values) engages with aesthetics.

© jacob voorthuis, 2025. Please cite Jacob Voorthuis as the author, The Theoria Project as the title and the page address as the location. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially under the following terms: No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits. Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.