aesthetic attitude the appropriate attitude or frame of mind for approaching art (or nature or other objects or events) so that one might both appreciate its intrinsic perceptual qualities, and as a result have an aesthetic experience.
The aesthetic attitude has been construed in many ways: (1) as disinterested, so that one’s experience of the work is not affected by any interest in its possible practical uses, (2) as a ‘distancing’ of oneself from one’s own personal concerns, (3) as the contemplation of an object, purely as an object of sensation, as it is in itself, for its own sake, in a way unaffected by any cognition or knowledge one may have of it. These different notions of aesthetic attitude have at times been combined within a single theory.
There is considerable doubt about whether there is such a thing as an aesthetic attitude. There is neither any special kind of action nor any special way of performing an ordinary action that ensures that we see a work as it ‘really is,’ and that results in our having an aesthetic experience. Furthermore, there are no purely sensory experiences, divorced from any cognitive content whatsoever. Criticisms of the notion of aesthetic attitude have reinforced attacks on aesthetics as a separate field of study within philosophy.
See also AESTHETIC PROPERTY, AESTHET — ICS , BEAUT. S.L.F.