ABSTRACT
What is it for something to be valuable as art? Why, if at all, is good art so important? These are two of the most important questions in philosophical aesthetics. But to see how we may answer them we must first delineate what kind of value we may be seeking to capture. Art works can be valued in all sorts of ways. I may value a work because of its commodity value, sentimental value, historical value or because it tells me certain things I did not know. Yet valuing a work for such reasons is only contingently related to its value as art. I may, after all, learn something from a work which is appalling art.
