ABSTRACT
A highly profitable approach to theorizing about art, though somewhat neglected, is a normative one. That is to say, instead of trying to define the essential nature of art, as recent philosophical aesthetics has tended to do, the next three chapters will be concerned with attempts to formulate a theory of art that explains its value. One way of beginning to formulate such a normative theory of art is to ask this question: What is it that we expect to get from art? A spontaneous answer, even to the point of being commonplace, is this: art is a source of pleasure or enjoyment, and in confirmation of this, it seems, most people wishing to pass favourable judgement on a book or a film will indeed say that they ‘enjoyed it’.
