An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art

from natural things or mere artifacts in order to define the appropriate kind of

response. Hence we could not use that kind of response to define the concept

of the artwork.^63

That is, artworks cannot be picked out as all and only those things that afford

absorptive pleasure, independently of historical knowledge, and art cannot

be defined as that which produces such pleasure independently of historic-

ally determined representational and expressive meaning. Moreover, as

Danto adds, not all works of art produce pleasure at all:“we are repelled,

disgusted, even sickened by certain works of art.”^64

Defenses of the aesthetic interest of art

These criticisms of aesthetic theories of art are based on accurate observa-

tions. Works do have aesthetic properties in relation to their historically

determined category memberships. There can be perceptually indistinguish-

able counterparts with different aesthetic properties. Some art, and some

successful art, is horrifying. Yet it is not clear that these points hit their mark

and succeed in undermining aesthetic theories of art.

Recall that for Beardsley the formal elements whose arrangement pleases

in a successful work of literary art are words-plus-their-meanings. Semantic

features of words and sentences–including not only reference and sense, but

also imagery, metaphor, irony, point of view, etc.–are among the elements

that are to be arranged so as to absorb the attentive mind. One need not dwell

on the mere look or shape of marks alone. (Kant similarly notes that aesthetic

ideas–semantic complexes bound up with the arrangement and symbolized

by it–are a focus of our interest in art.) Likewise for visual and aural art. Any

broadly representational features of works are included as elements of the

arrangement to which audiences are to attend. There is no requirement that

aesthetic pleasure be afforded in the act of immediate perception of the

work, independently of any awareness of what it is about or what it

expresses. Likewise there is no requirement in aesthetic theories that the

audience prescind from prior historical knowledge of the genre of a work at

hand or of its place in a line of historical development either within a genre

or across genres. Instead, according to aesthetic theories the audience is

(^63) Danto,Transfiguration of the Commonplace,p.91. (^64) Ibid., p. 92.
70 An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art