Abstract

Noël Carroll denies and Robert Stecker affirms that it is a necessary condition of aesthetic experience that it should be valued for its own sake. I make use of their controversy to argue for the psychological impossibility of discharging very common practices of art evaluation and analysis without undergoing an aesthetic experience valued for its own sake. By way of supporting my thesis and also making progress in Stecker and Carroll’s dispute about aesthetic experience, I analyse their methodological assumptions and develop further our understanding of negative, indifferent and unexpected aesthetic experiences. The article provides a defence of Stecker’s position based on my contention regarding art evaluation and analysis