Beginning with the current discontent felt by prominent aesthetic theorists over the marginalization of their field within philosophy, this paper seeks to find an explanation for the discipline's apparent neglect. A meta-aesthetic examination of approaches to the study of art and of concurrent historical trends in the art world itself reveals that a methodological emphasis on the ontology of art objects and the conditions for their perception has created a gulf between art and human life that renders it unimportant to (...) central philosophical concerns. The disenfranchisement of the field, I argue, is thus due to factors internal to the discipline itself. (shrink)