Questions in Aesthetics

Abstract

Aesthetics is often taken to be, and often practised as, an informed examination of one’s response to given objects or ideas which are accepted as subject to such an examination. In other words, it is often the case that one is not concerned with the question of how or why such things or ideas trigger aesthetic responses in the first place. When turning, for example, to my local art gallery as the proprietor of my anticipated aesthetic pleasures, I do not generally question what it was in the first place that made me think of that gallery as the place where such pleasures are to be satisfied (if at all). Perhaps this is as it should be. After all, I do not need to be aware of the precise definition of ‘temperature’, for instance, in order to realize whether it is cold or hot. Similarly, a precise definition of what art is and where it is to be found may not be necessary for me in order to appreciate it whenever I come across it.