Conclusion

Abstract

The framework for philosophical aesthetics developed throughout this work rests on four main pillars: outlining them here offers a global overview of the direction this text has taken. The first ‘pillar’ is, of course, the distinction between artistic interest and judgement and (mere) aesthetic interest and judgement, a contrast central to our articulation of the distinctiveness of the concept art. As elaborated in Chapter 1, the drawing of this distinction had three important corollaries: first, that terms in their artistic uses (or the properties thereby ascribed) amounted to something different from that in the aesthetic uses of those same terms (or, again, the properties thereby ascribed). For instance, what counted as beauty or gaudiness amounted to something different when the beautiful object, or gaudy object, was an artwork than when it was some other object of aesthetic interest or judgement.