Abstract

Barry Vacker argues that Torres and Kamhi's What Art Is seems destined to become the seminal explication of Randian aesthetics. But the authors conflate a psychology of art with a philosophy of aesthetics, and, in so doing, embrace several aesthetic divides that have plagued modern arts and culture—art versus beauty, art versus material function, and order versus chaos. What Art Is presents a theory of aesthetics that is inherently anti-aesthetic, ultimately seeking to preserve a past order against the chaotic future