Writing about aesthetic experience, Susan Sontag has justly observed that, “To become involved with a work of art entails, to be sure, the experience of detaching oneself from the world. But the work of art itself is also a vibrant, magical, and exemplary object which returns us to the world in some way more open and enriched.” How does art enrich us in this manner? In what ways can art become a “vibrant, magical, and exemplary object”? To answer these questions requires a discussion of the nature of aesthetic experience and of the qualities of aesthetic value that make that experience possible. Yet to pursue this course today is fraught with difficulties, because a major current of intellectual discourse denies the importance of this experience and denigrates the possibility of articulating values in art.

Defining the Method

If a present-day Hazlitt or Home were to appear among us to provide an updated study of the “spirit of the age,” a sequel to those earlier “contemporary portraits” that offered reflections on current intellectual fashions and characteristic ways of thought, then no doubt the subject of “critical” theory, with its radical skepticism as to the location of value in art and morality, would figure prominently in that work. Its pendant would be found in the conservative defense of what both ideological parties stereotypically call the “canon.”