Abstract

Since the second half of the twentieth century, the influential concept of aesthetic experience has been strongly criticized by powerful voices both in analytic philosophy and in continental theory, sometimes to the point of rejecting its significance for art or even to denying its very existence. Nonetheless, it stubbornly reasserts itself as central to understanding art's meaning and value. Philosophical critique of aesthetic experience takes multiple forms. Theorists seeking a definition of art generally reject aesthetic experience as inadequate for this task because it is both too wide and too narrow. Aesthetic experience surely occurs beyond the limits of art, as in our encounter with natural beauty, but it...