Exposing and expanding our restricted cultural and intellectual presuppositions of what constitutes aesthetic experience, this book aims to re-explore and affirm the place of aesthetic experience - in its evaluative, phenomenological and transformational sense - not only in relation to art and artists but to our inner and spiritual lives.

In this volume, a team of internationally respected contributors theorize the concept of aesthetic experience and its value. Exposing and expanding our restricted cultural and intellectual presuppositions of what constitutes aesthetic experience, the book aims to re-explore and affirm the place of aesthetic experience - in its evaluative, phenomenological and transformational sense - not only in relation to art and artists but to our inner and spiritual lives. To this end, the authors attempt to show how we can learn from the wisdom of Buddhist and Asian philosophies.

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Contemplating the Undefinable
Adele Tomlin
Experience and the Nature of the Aesthetic
1. Aesthetic Essence
Malcolm Budd
2. The Aesthetic: From Experience to Art
Paul Crowther
3. The Dialectic of Aesthetics: the New Strife between Philosophy and Art
Christophe Menke
4. Experiential Theories of Aesthetic Value
Gary Iseminger
The Value and Scope of Aesthetic Experience
5. The Aesthetic: From Analysis to Eros
Richard Shusterman
6. On the Scope of Aesthetic Experience
Martin Seel
7. Refined Emotion in Aesthetic Experience
Kathleen Higgins
8. Taste, Food and the Limits of Pleasure
Carolyn Korsmeyer
Aesthetic Experience, Artists, and Philosophies of Art
9. Aesthetic Experience, Art and Artists
Noel Carroll
10. Between Being and Doing: Aesthetics at the Crossroads
Jean-Pierre Cometti
11. Schopenhauer and the Foundations of Aesthetic Experience
Alex Neill
Contributors
Index