We can distinguish two different views to identify the value of art. The essentialist view holds to find the value of art in an essential or defining property of art. The non-essentialist and pluralist view denies the essentialist view and maintains that we must find the value of art in other places than its defining properties. In this paper, I argue for the non-essentialist and pluralist view as a better explanation for artistic value. However, it is not because of the logical failure of the essentialist view, but because of the failure of the theses that the existing essentialist views hold. According to Stecker, the essentialist view generally insists on four theses: artistic value is unitary kind of value and/or unique to art and/or intrinsically valuable and/or shared by all artworks across all art forms. Though there can be weaker versions of the view that drop or accept some of them, I argue, following Stecker's discussion, that any of the four theses can be admissible and hence this inadmissibility naturally leads us to consider the non-essentialist and pluralist view as a valid alternative on artistic value. Lastly, I apply the pluralist view to literature in order to testify its validity.

We can distinguish two different views to identify the value of art. The essentialist view holds to find the value of art in an essential or defining property of art. The non-essentialist and pluralist view denies the essentialist view and maintains that we must find the value of art in other places than its defining properties. In this paper, I argue for the non-essentialist and pluralist view as a better explanation for artistic value. However, it is not because of the logical failure of the essentialist view, but because of the failure of the theses that the existing essentialist views hold. According to Stecker, the essentialist view generally insists on four theses: artistic value is unitary kind of value and/or unique to art and/or intrinsically valuable and/or shared by all artworks across all art forms. Though there can be weaker versions of the view that drop or accept some of them, I argue, following Stecker's discussion, that any of the four theses can be admissible and hence this inadmissibility naturally leads us to consider the non-essentialist and pluralist view as a valid alternative on artistic value. Lastly, I apply the pluralist view to literature in order to testify its validity.

artistic value, pluralism, essentialism, intrinsic value, instrumental value