I agree with William about the "subjectivity" of art. There is no absolute, mind-independent, ontic "quality" of "artness" up in Plato's heaven. Even those who have been sufficiently involved in a genre to be called "sophisticated" can disagree in their response to works in that genre. The variety of sensibility can be startling. It's astonishing how many highly literate people profess disgust at Shakespeare.
For me, the most interesting inquiry in aesthetics continues to be focused on what I'll call the "aesthetic experience". I know even that phrase will be disputed and rejected by some. But I'm fairly firm about saying I know it when I feel it. I'm convinced there are those who all their lives read poetry, visit visual-art museums, listen to music, but who fail in one or more of the genres ever to have an "aesthetic experience". One can encounter a bemused blankness when trying to convey what an "a.e." is like. It is roughly comparable to trying to convey the feeling of an orgasm in sex to those who've never had one. I've known warm people who have willingly indulged in sexual play all their lives (It's friendly! It's "nice"!) but who persuasively report they have never reached orgasm. Luckily for me I've had what I call a.e.'s in a variety of genres - and for me the question of exactly what is going on and why in each is an abiding question. I grant that the best moments in Mozart and Dickinson are sensually different but I persist in feeling they are both a.e.'s. Why? Perhaps because I am stuck by the variety and inexplicability of the a.e., I can't agree with William about " the big reasons for making art at all". For example, I'm not sure how Mozart and Beethoven, in writing sonatas, were doing the likes of investigating "values and contradictions in human life" or "why good people do bad things". Long ago I attacked Arthur Miller's manifesto about what a playwright "ought to be doing" in his writing. Strangely, in demanding that playwrights grapple solely with "global" social issues, Miller seemed extraordinarily narrow.
