For well over two centuries, the doctrine of the disinterestedness of aesthetic perception has stood as a dogma of Western philosophy. Developing in the eighteenth century in the works of Shaftesbury and succeeding British writers, emerging as the theoretical centerpiece in Kant, elaborated by Schopenhauer, and refined by Bullough, Bergson, and Croce, aesthetic disinterestedness stands as a “major watershed in the history of aesthetics” (Stolnitz, 1961, p. 139). Indeed, up to the present time, the tendency to affirm this attitude has dominated most theoretical discussion in the English-speaking world.

Let me recall the claims of this idea by citing Kant's (1790) classic formulation:

Although there is much in the Kantian aesthetic that continues to reflect our experience and claim our assent, such as his contention that the judgment of taste concerns pleasure that is unintellectual and immediate, there are facets of his view that reflect a tradition in aesthetics that is open to serious question. This is because the doctrine of disinterestedness and the correlative ideas that it fosters do not derive from a close examination of the conditions and features of our aesthetic experience of art and nature.