Hype is a pervasive feature of contemporary life, and there is an interdisciplinary consensus that hype is a form of exaggeration that has pernicious large-scale effects. But this view cannot account for the fact that, sometimes, the hype is real—hype can target things that really are as good as the hype makes them out to be. Here I argue that hype is not exaggeration but rather a distinctive type of action that encourages collective valuing (and the distinctive goods collective valuing realizes) by highlighting sources of value and calling for its own imitation. As such, whether "hyping" is appropriate or not depends on the constitutive values of the practice in which it operates. Hype is appropriate in a practice to the extent that the kind of collective valuing hype promotes serves, rather than undermines, the aims of the practice, and so it will have very different roles to play in e.g. aesthetic valuing and scientific practice. I end by arguing that Kantian “subjectively universal” aesthetic judgments, as articulated in the Analytic of the Beautiful, are proto-hype.
Presenter Bio: Nick Riggle is Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the University of San Diego. His work centers around questions about the nature of aesthetic value, its place in our lives, and its importance for our practices and institutions. He draws on and contributes to work in value theory, philosophy of language, history of philosophy, moral psychology, social philosophy, and other areas. He also writes for non-academic audiences and has published work in various popular outlets, including two books: On Being Awesome: A Unified Theory of How Not to Suck (Penguin Books), and This Beauty: A Philosophy of Being Alive (Basic Books). His works has appeared in The Philosophical Review, Mind, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, The New York Times, McSweeney's, LitHub, Aeon, and others outlets.
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