Aesthetic theories of art refuse to go away. In spite of decades of criticism and derision, a minority of thinkers stubbornly persist in maintaining that we need a general theory of art that makes essential appeal to beauty, elegance, daintiness, and other aesthetic properties.1 However, those who approach the theory of art from a sociological point of view tend to be skeptical about any account of art that appeals to aesthetic properties in a fundamental way. This skepticism takes two overlapping (...) forms, only one of which I will pursue here. The form of skepticism I am interested in is concerned to deny that we need to appeal to aesthetic considerations in explaining the production of art. Let us call this production skepticism. This form of skepticism does not coincide with skepticism about the appeal to aesthetic considerations in explaining our experiences and judgments about art. Let us call that consumption skepticism. Examples of consumption skeptics are Pierre Bourdieu and Terry Eagleton, who think that aesthetic value judgments about art really reflect social status rather than being a response to qualities of the works.2 In my view, the reasons, such as they are, that Bourdieu and Eagleton put forward in favor of.. (shrink)