In thinking about values of art we can draw on the analogy that the institution of art has to the institution of, say, baseball. Walton talks about the distinction between values intrinsic to the institution, such as winning the game, and values extrinsic to the institution, such as the entertainment society receives from watching a game. In the same way, Walton says, there are intrinsic values for art. For instance, a violinist playing a piece by Bach might be judged on how well she stays true to the original score. Extrinsic values in art might include something like the memories the Bach piece brings up in the listener and the pleasure that brings her. Walton takes the intrinsic values of the institution to be arbitrary. However, he says they are still tied in a very important way to aesthetic value.

Aesthetic value, Walton says, is a second-order value. It’s the appreciation of some value. For example, when the person listening to Bach being played enjoys the memories brought up by hearing it, she might also appreciate the ability for that piece of music to bring up those memories. These second-order values are aesthetic values. Walton says we can enjoy different activities or objects for whatever value they have without appreciating the ability of that activity or object to provide that value. For instance, we might enjoy walking along the beach without appreciating that walking along the beach provides that enjoyment. We might even enjoy listening to some piece of music without appreciating the artist’s ability to produce such enjoyable music. In both of these examples we are not noticing any aesthetic value, rather we are just noticing the first-order value.

According to Walton the second-order values, viz. aesthetic values, can come in different forms. Often admiration of an artist’s ability to create a piece with artistic value is the form that aesthetic value takes. But other than admiration, the second-order value might come by way of awe, wonder, or even negative attitudes such as shock or revolt.

Aesthetic value, then, is the appreciation ^[1] of an activity’s or object’s value. Walton admits this might not be consistent with the way aesthetic value has been used and that it might not be what critics have in mind when they consider something’s aesthetic value, but it seems to get at what aesthetic value is. It also seems to be capture many of the uses of aesthetic value.

1. ^[1] It’s important to note that the appreciation has to be appropriate. An object doesn’t have aesthetic value simply because anyone appreciates it for any reason. Instead, it has to be appreciated with propriety. ↩

• Walton, Kendall. (2008). Marvelous Images: On Values and the Arts. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.