ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief intellectual history of the concept of value in modern Western aesthetics, which, as we shall see, is also marked by the same movement toward formalization and, eventually, structuralism. Of all aesthetic concepts, value is one that brings to the foreground art's interconnection with, or non-autonomy from, or, even more precisely, structural and conceptual homology with, the other fundamental constituents of human life and society. The modern concepts of aesthetic and economic values, and aesthetics and political economy as distinct fields, will emerge, as is succinctly illustrated in the shift from David Hume to Adam Smith. Aesthetic theory is birthed on the premises of the non-utilitarian character of art and the non-self-interestedness of aesthetic contemplation. For Immanuel Kant, the aesthetic judgment involves subjective pleasure, for from concepts there is no transition to the feeling of pleasure or pain.
