Granted none of these are only late Twentieth century problems, but they are dealt with now in a way that is different from how they were treated historically, so it is important to consider them separately. The difficulties with these sections are twofold. Thus again the problem of separating history and theory. Secondly, the section on Intentionalism suddenly moves from visual art, on which the book is mainly focused, to literary examples. I think that the visual arts, literary arts and musical arts all deserve separate consideration.
Dickie closes the book with important material, but makes it too complicated.
It is a climax of aesthetic theory the climax we have reached currently perhaps, but not one readily available to undergraduate students the way it is presented here. Here we have chapters on Beardsley s and Goodman s Instrumentalism which are difficult in their own right, but not unmanageable. Then there is a final chapter on Another Kind of Instrumentalism. Here Dickie critiques Beardsley and Goodman, and tries to pull what is good out of both to present a more accurate account of our aesthetic experiences. He does this, however, with a series of matrices which lead students to believe that art can be judged on a chart a complicated chart, but still a chart.