Jeff asked:

Why does aesthetics receive so little treatment by modern philosophers? So much of life's pleasure
and meaning derive from ideas of beauty. Even computer programmers and mathematicians use
aesthetic terms like "elegant" and "pretty" to describe their work. Aesthetic arguments pervade
discussions about environmentalism. Why is something so fundamental, so ignored?

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It's at least partly because aesthetics has become a separate academic subject during the past fifty
years. It's no longer conceived as a part of philosophy in the sense in which logic, ethics, theory of
knowledge, etc., are conceived. It is mainly the separate profession of aestheticians who take
aesthetics seriously nowadays, not philosophers. (Which is a pity, in my opinion.)

T.P.Uschanov
University of Helsinki

It seems to me that you are concerned that in the world today we are giving aesthetic value to
objects which we feel should not have such value, but there isn't any real shift in objects taken to be
beautiful.

A term such as "elegant" is applied appropriately within the parameters of the concept. For instance,
elegance implies some dignity and may be applied to Doric pillars but not sheds. To use an
evaluative term of a computer or a mathematical formula is to claim that it has aesthetic features, but
this is not to claim it is a work of art. While there is a sense in which I can see that my computer can
be seen as elegant this is only comparatively with big cumbersome computers of the past. There is
no sense in which I would claim it was beautiful or a work of art.

The institutional theory of what a work of art is would, however, allow that a computer can be a work
of art. Duchamps' Urinaland Tracey Emin's Bedhave become works of art simply by being admitted
to galleries. But to display something in a gallery cannot make it beautiful, or even pretty or elegant.
These problems are not ignored by philosophers and aesthetics is still studied in philosophy
departments, at least in the University of London.

Rachel Browne