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Beauty

Why is aesthetics so concerned with beauty? When I listen to music or appreciate art I respond to it in all sorts of different ways and beauty is only a small but significant part of the experience of art.
Accepted:
July 15, 2011

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Allen Stairs
July 15, 2011 (changed July 15, 2011) Permalink

The answer is that it isn't. Here are links to recent tables of contents from two major aesthetics journals:

http://bjaesthetics.oxfordjournals.org/content/51/2.toc

http://www.temple.edu/jaac/archive/69.2.htm

As you'll see, beauty doesn't make much of a splash here; only one essay on the topic. If you do some archival digging, you'll see that this is pretty typical and has been for a long time. Aestheticians would agree with you: beauty is only one bit of our experience of art, and often not the most important bit.

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