ABSTRACT
It might, finally, be argued that the average citizen should not have to put up with whatever the avant-garde aesthete might happen to appreciate. People have been known to discard plastic bottles filled with urine onto the roadside in Oregon, and philosopher Flo Leibowitz has shown me a photograph of this as posing a problem for my thesis. I would agree that although a photograph of such a thing may be pleasing to a contemporary art-lover, this would be no reason to condone the continued presence of such bottles on public roads. On the other hand I do not think anyone is morally required to find a photograph of a plastic bottle of urine on the roadside (or the bottle itself!) aesthetically disgusting. Also, even though a photograph of such a bottle might evoke disgust, it is still possible for it be good and even beautiful. It might then be asked what it means for me to say the photograph is good. Unlike Kant I do not demand or even expect that everyone find it good. What the phrase means is simply that I would be surprised if people with similar training in the contemporary visual arts would not be able to see the photograph, or the scene photographed, as I do.
