Value of the plenary experience of emotion

Two central questions that a theory of art must address, if it is to be useful to us, are “Why do we value works of art at all?” and “Why do we value some works of art more than other works of art?” These are questions to which the earlier chapters have not provided answers. We have an account of a distinctive experience that is possible only when we perceive a work of art, but we have not yet established any reason to value that experience, let alone the work of art that gives rise to it. It should be clear that if the preceding argument has prepared us to assert anything about the value that works of art have, it will be a value derived from having a plenary experience of emotion. What we now require is an account of why the plenary experience of emotion is valuable, and why the possibility of this valuable experience in our expressive perception of art makes art valuable for us. If we can provide such an account, the distinctive nature of the experience of art will be shown to account for a value that is unique to the category of art, and one that some individual works of art might be judged to possess to a greater or lesser degree than other works of art.