What is Aesthetic Value?

Abstract

Abstract This chapter offers an answer to the question: what is aesthetic value? It defends aesthetic empiricism: the view that the primary bearer of aesthetic value are experiences and that other things have aesthetic value in virtue of their capacity to provide aesthetically valuable experiences. By way of answering criticisms of this conception of aesthetic value, it argues that it is coherent, that it is grounded in the history of thought about the aesthetic, and that it does not succumb to counterexamples. The chapter concludes by looking at the idea that aesthetic value should be defined instead in terms of aesthetic properties and argues that defensible versions of such an approach are consistent with a definition in terms of aesthetic experience.