ABSTRACT

The second option broadens the concept of the aesthetic beyond its traditional boundaries. It says that we are responding to a work of art “aesthetically” not only when we respond to its formal elements or to the relationship between its formal elements and its content, but also whenever we respond to a feature that makes a work the work of art it is. (These features may include substantive as well as formal features.) On this second option, the aesthetic is understood in such a way as to track the artistic, however broadly or narrowly that is to be understood.