Aesthetic Expertise

"For Skille?s, aesthetic expertise is held and transmitted collectively; aesthetic deference and testimony are part and parcel of aesthetic education and practice. Aesthetically satisfying lives are embedded in social communities. There is much to argue about here, but Skille?s is alive to potential objections and engages with them undogmatically. He draws on his own 'moonlighting' as a serious student and appreciator of wine to take the issues beyond the traditional haunts of art. Skille?s gives a lucid, bracing defense of the centrality and legitimacy of aesthetic expertise. This book is a lively affirmation of aesthetic expertise as robust, shared, and valued."

"In this timely, concise and cogently argued book, Ole Martin Skille?s shows how the devaluation of aesthetic expertise results in a significant reduction in the richness and value of our aesthetic and artistic lives. With a judicious combination of empirical and philosophical methods, and drawing widely on Kant and Hume as well as the contemporary literature in philosophical aesthetics, Aesthetic Expertise shows how the acquisition of knowledge and fine-grained aesthetic sensibilities attunes our perception and activates our minds and bodies, leading to a greater awareness and receptivity to the beauty of art and of the world around us. Using examples from music and the arts, but also wine, Skille?s constructs an elegant series of arguments which show how the benefits of trusting to experts are both profound and amply supported by the evidence. The result is a satisfying and accessible book, the lightly-worn wisdom of which reminds us that the old adage - "in vino veritas" - remains true in more ways that one."

"Skille?s is someone who writes about aesthetics without feeling the need to be 'precious'. For him aesthetic judgement is an expertise not a gift. That makes it useful as well as understandable. Bringing together the idea of the aesthetic and the analysis of expertise is a great project."