ABSTRACT
We have seen how the eighteenth century bequeathed a theoretical frame to modern aesthetics that has profoundly influenced the understanding and appreciation of art for over two hundred years.2 Its key concepts, supplemented with a few additions from the romantic era, continue to supply the vocabulary for accounts of the arts of both scholar and layperson. Nothing seems more natural than to think of aesthetic appreciation as a distinctive kind of attention, contemplative and disinterested, that is directed toward a work of art apart from any other consideration, particularly of use, that would compromise our satisfaction in its intrinsic value. We recall how Kant gave this theory its definitive formulation: ‘Taste is the faculty of judging of an object or a method of representing it by an entirely disinterested satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The object of such satisfaction is called beautiful’.3
