ABSTRACT
A work of literature is a work of art; and a work of art is something which can sustain, and is usually intended to sustain, aesthetic attention. The differences between aesthetic attention and looking as a prelude to practical activity become clearer when people consider the two attitudes' satisfaction conditions. There is an internal relation between the aesthetic attitude and pleasure, since pleasure is a form of non-voluntary attention. Science attempts to show how the world is in itself, and not how it appears to any observer. Since the seventeenth century, this kind of reductive explanation has proved remarkably successful, but it should not blind people to the fact that there are other forms of explanation that are equally valuable. Imagining part of the world from a point of view is a completely commonplace form of thought, and reading or watching literature is a natural enhancement and extension of it.
