Provides a brief background on current developments in aesthetics and the contested concepts of three approaches to aesthetics: (1) historical philosophical aesthetics; (2) aesthetic perception and experience; and (3) aesthetic inquiry. Concludes by proposing a fourth approach based on critical theory. (Author/BSR)

The character of art criticism, both how it naturally occurs and how it is academically constructed, is reflective of social and aesthetic value orientations--much as the art object itself has been found to be a clue to the values of the society in which it is practiced, used, and appreciated. The belief that the art object possesses…