Abstract

Review of a collection resulting from a 2003 British Society of Aesthetics sponsored London conference, ‘The Value of Aesthetic Experience’. Includes work by well-known analytic aestheticians. The book is more an exploration than a sustained argument for the following conjecture: aestheticians would do well for themselves and their discipline were they to eschew focus on art objects and instead take seriously connections between human well-being and something like a moral imperative to seek out aesthetic experience at large. I lay out the editors’ strategy for effectively presenting that conjecture and mention the main point of each of the book’s chapters so that it might be understood how that point is intended by them to contribute to this goal. I include an assessment of their efforts and a few ideas of a way forward for those who might want to take up where the volume leaves off.