5) The Consequences of This Critique of Aesthetics

We must clearly distinguish between art, as the body of works, techniques, and museums, and aesthetics, as the discipline that claims to study the pleasure experienced when viewing a piece of art—that is, aesthetic feeling.

Aesthetics can only hold a legitimate place as an independent and coherent discipline if it has a unique object of study exclusive to it, thus establishing its necessity. Otherwise, it would be superfluous, its object essentially overlapping with those of other disciplines.
Aesthetics claims two unique objects that no other discipline addresses: the concept of beauty and the pleasure derived not from the matter, but from the form of the object.

In other words, disciplines such as physiology or psychoanalysis can study the causes or nature of the pleasure derived from an object's matter, which falls under the category of the agreeable. However, since an entirely different kind of pleasure is derived from the form of the object, aesthetics, as a distinct discipline, is deemed necessary to study this specific pleasure.

Finally, because beauty is a concept with a particular, irreducible meaning, distinct from other similar concepts such as pleasantness or value, it warrants study by a specific discipline: aesthetics.

If we have succeeded in demonstrating that the concept of beauty and the pleasure derived from form are not distinct concepts—meaning that they can be reduced to already known, clearer concepts—then aesthetics loses its coherence and necessity. Its legitimacy rested entirely upon these concepts. However, art itself remains; only the discourse around it must now be re-situated within another discipline. Axiology replaces aesthetics as the field where questions about art should be examined.

Indeed, rather than diminishing art, the dissolution of aesthetics may enable it to reach its fullest expression by uncovering its true foundation.

The work of art can now be seen as an object capable of conveying 'contents of meaning of great value', whether this value appeals to the general public or to unique, individual sensibilities, depending on the artist's intent.

Museums thus become 'places where experiences of values can occur', something often absent in the 'real' world, granting art its unique legitimacy by providing an effect available only through itself.
These encounters with values may be unprecedented and even disconcerting. Contemporary art, which most prominently features the 'disconcerting', may indeed benefit from the disappearance of aesthetics. Aesthetics would no longer be able to grant legitimacy to an art form unconcerned with beauty and no longer reliant on the traditional Aristotelian pairing of matter and form.

Finally, if the disappearance of aesthetics were proven necessary, it might paradoxically allow us to answer the traditional question it has posed since its inception: 'I find this work beautiful. But is it really beautiful?'

As long as this question is framed in terms of beauty, it remains unsolvable. How can we answer a question based on an empty concept? If beauty is some mysterious quality that magically appears or vanishes in a work depending on the viewer, we will never determine if the work is truly beautiful.
However, if we reformulate the question as: 'Do the contents of meaning we encounter in this work (such as joy, the colour red, etc.) hold any real value?' we at least arrive at a meaningful question. We ask, for instance, whether joy holds a high place in the real and universal hierarchy of things.
At this point, it becomes the task of axiology—the discipline dedicated to determining the value of things—to answer the question. Should axiology succeed in achieving its objective, the question of the true 'beauty' of things would be resolved. But is this not just a vain hope?
This lingering doubt remains at the very core of our inquiry.

In sum, there is a certain irony of fate: only by disappearing might aesthetics ultimately solve the aesthetic problem—revealing that, at its core, there is nothing truly aesthetic about it.