Why It's OK to Think This Song is About You

In my book project, Why It’s OK to Think This Song is About You (under contract with Routledge), I investigate the phenomenon of aesthetic vanity, or the experience of thinking an artwork is about you. I explain this in terms of the feeling of being ‘gotten’, ‘grasped’, or understood by art. Though typically thought of as a vice, I argue that the kind of vanity on display in our aesthetic lives is not so bad. In other words, appreciating art vainly is permissible because of the particular good it makes possible, namely self-understanding. In developing the argument of the book, I try to revive two traditions in aesthetics that have fallen out of fashion, romanticism and expressionism, and to reconsider their virtues, especially when it comes to capturing the importance we assign to artworks in the formation of our individual identities.