Lonely Arts: The Status of Aesthetics as A Sub‐Discipline

This article offers five things: first, a description of the current status of aesthetics as a sub-discipline of philosophy, showing that it's currently not regarded as part of the field's core; second, a case history asserting that the particular interests and approaches of aestheticians active in the twenty years or so after 1945 started trends that have defined the sub-discipline ever since; third, a diagnosis arguing that this definition, which involves a narrow focus on certain questions about art, is responsible for the marginal status of aesthetics, leading as it does to the estrangement of curious students and the devaluation of expertise in aesthetics; fourth, a prescription suggesting that we can reverse those trends, and so bring aesthetics toward the core of philosophy; and fifth, a prognosis demonstrating that, happily, just the approach prescribed is already starting to take hold in aesthetics.