Acquaintance Is Aesthetically Significant

Abstract This chapter argues that acquaintance has unique aesthetic significance because much (if not all) aesthetic knowledge and appreciation requires acquaintance. Aesthetic knowledge is knowledge of a thing’s aesthetic properties, like its beauty, unity, or balance. Aesthetic appreciation is a certain positive response to those properties based on aesthetic knowledge of them. The author argues that much of this knowledge and appreciation could not be gained in any other way—that is, without acquaintance—and that acquaintance is therefore required for it. Then he argues that acquaintance is the foundation for all aesthetic appreciation because, even if some aesthetic appreciation does not require acquaintance with the object of appreciation, it does require acquaintance with something aesthetically relevant to it. Finally, the author argues that acquaintance is essential to what makes some instances of aesthetic appreciation more successful than others.