"This paper will challenge the distinction that is made in some quarters, but not in all, between use value and aesthetic value in literature and elsewhere, a v

"This paper will challenge the distinction that is made in some quarters, but not in all, between use value and aesthetic value in literature and elsewhere, a view that restricts the realm of art and the aesthetic to a minor, often diversionary role in human activity. This view derives from the presumption that art is an autonomous activity set off from other activities and released from moral, utilitarian, religious, and other entanglements: it directs the mind to the idea of “art as such.” Such a divorce is, of course, an impossibility. No art and no theory of art ever conformed, or possibly could conform, to this standard. All art and art theory bleeds into the social realm, is contaminated with ideology, carries out moral agendas (however secretively), performs utilitarian functions of innumerable kinds, and hence can never be isolated from these enabling frameworks. Art and aesthetics can be aspectually isolated from morals and the rest at any point in time, and they have been so isolated from antiquity to the present. But there is no necessary reason to make this kind of separation. And there are further, possibly deeper reasons not to do so." - James I. Porter https://classicalstudies.org/utility-aesthetic-and-aesthetics-life https://classicalstudies.org/utility-aesthetic-and-aesthetic...