ABSTRACT
This essay examines the dominant characterization of aesthetic experience
among Anglophone philosophers for the purpose of replacing it. To that end, I will begin by speculating about why the standard concept of aesthetic
experience came to play and continues to play such an important role for the
philosophy of art. Next I shall argue that that function is by now obsolete.
Indeed, perhaps the standard characterization of aesthetic experience never
really was as effective in discharging that function as its defenders imagined.
I will also attempt to reveal other inadequacies of the dominant concept of
aesthetic experience, especially in terms of the ways in which it appears to
exclude certain kinds of artistic creativity from its domain, while, at the same time, I shall introduce an alternative conception of aesthetic experience
which I call the content-oriented approach.
