''Place in garden, lawn, to beautify landscape.-When Don Featherstone-s plastic pink flamingos were first advertised in the 1957 Sears catalogue, these were the instructions. The flamingos are placed on the cover of this book for another reason: to start us asking questions. That-s where philosophy always begins.Introducing Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art is written to introduce students to a broad array of questions that have occupied philosophers since antiquity, and which continue to bother us today-questions like: - Is there something special about something-s being art? Can a mass-produced plastic bird have that special something? - If someone likes plastic pink flamingos, does that mean they have bad taste? Is bad taste a bad thing? - Do Featherstone-s pink flamingos mean anything? If so, does that depend on what Featherstone meant in designing them?Each chapter opens using a real world example - such as Marcel Duchamp-s signed urinal, The Exorcist, and
