Abstract

In recent years, it has become rather popular to rely on the results of empirical studies in trying to answer some of the traditional questions in philosophical aesthetics, such as the one concerning the nature and justification of aesthetic evaluation. In opposition to this very empiricist approach, I would like to put forward a more rationalist picture of the aesthetic experience and evaluation of artworks. More specifically, I aim to critically discuss the aesthetic relevance of three kinds of empirical studies: of those that examine particular artworks by means of scientific or historical investigations; of those that use the empirical methods of psychology and sociology in order to examine our aesthetic evaluations of single works or groups of work; and finally of those that scrutinize our general faculty for aesthetic judgement by means of the cognitive sciences.