Abstract

Monroe Beardsley wrote that there would be no aesthetics if everyone was silent about works of art.1 Similarly, there would be no philosophical aesthetics of design if no one ever talked critically about, but instead quietly enjoyed or put up with, our built environment and things of everyday use. But whereas Beardsley could draw on an established and distinct body of art, music, and literary criticism to set the aims and scope of aesthetics, a similar metacritical approach to the aesthetics of design has no directly equivalent body of critical work. That's not to say designed things aren't objects of critical appraisal raising judgments of a distinctively aesthetic character. Charles Rennie Mackintosh's...