What is art? What is it to understand a work of art? What is the value of art? Robert Stecker to answer these central questions of aesthetics by placing them within the context of an ongoing debate criticizing, but also explaining what can be learned from, alternative views. His unified philosophy of art, defined in terms of its evolving functions, is used to explain and to justify current interpretive practices and to motivate an investigation of artistic value.

In addition to offering original answers to major questions of aesthetics, Artworks covers most of the major issues in contemporary analytic aesthetics and discusses many major, as well as minor, figures who have written about these issues, including Stanley Fish, Joseph Margolis, Richard Rorty, and Richard Shusterman.