Abstract
The main topic of the present dissertation thesis is a debate concerning the nature of aesthetic concepts (remarks or judgements) in the 20th century analytic aesthetics focusing primarily on the role of its two most influential contributions, namely Frank N. Sibley's "Aesthetic Concepts" and Kendall L.
Walton's "Categories of Art". Sibley's groundbreaking analysis of the problem is interpreted here as an original formulation of the traditional problem of modern philosophical aesthetics, namely that of an (aesthetic) judgement claiming universal agreement while lacking any decisive general criteria.
However, as soon as Sibley's paper was published two main tendencies to weaken its main insight appeared: either there has been a tendency to see aesthetic judgments as obeying some sort of rules or to interpret it as an expression of private taste preferences and pleasurable sensations. Kendall Walton's cognitivism inaugurating the later stage of the debate in the early seventies belongs to the first category.
The tendency to distort the main insights of Sibley's initial analysis is interpreted as a long-lasting influence of the philosophy of logical positivism on analytic aesthetics. The thesis also presents a positive contribution to the debate proposing to apply results of semantic theories of metaphor on the problem of aesthetic judgment.