Aesthetic contemplation, which is possible for any object and only especially easy for the beautiful, most thoroughly closes the gap between the self and the object. It allows as easy, effortless, and harmonious formation of the image of the object as if this image were determined only by the nature of the self. Hence the sense of liberation which accompanies an aesthetic mood; it is characterized by emancipation from the stuffy dull pressure of life, and the expansion of the self with joy and freedom into the objects whose reality would otherwise violate it. Such is the psychological tone of joy in the mere possession of money.

XREF: Connects to Kantian and Schopenhauerian aesthetics of disinterested contemplation, and anticipates the instrumentalization of aesthetic feeling in economic life.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 451