ABSTRACT
I Aesthetics is the prime example of a subject discipline that exists purely by virtue of its own self-generated problems. That art needs explaining, or that such explanations possess some distinctive philosophical interest, is self-evident only in terms of that discourse which produced ‘aesthetics’ as a largely autonomous order of knowledge. This is not to say that the discipline is a fraud or that its arguments have no possible use or relevance. There have indeed been those-like I.A. Richards1-who dismissed aesthetics tout court as a species of mystified word-magic, and sought to replace it with a ‘scientific’ study of what goes on psychologically when we respond to works of art. But this kind of bluff empiricist gesture ignores the very real conceptual problems which have grown up-for better or worsearound the categories of ‘art’ and ‘aesthetic experience’. These issues may be wholly selfinduced by the discipline which sets out to explain or resolve them. But the same is true to some extent of any branch of knowledge that defines its subject area by singling out questions of especial theoretical interest. Even the ‘hard’ sciences construct a selective domain of research and, with it, a certain heuristic model of the objects, problems or phenomena under investigation. To suppose otherwise is to fall, like Richards, into an unreflecting positivism devoid of theoretical content or grasp.
