Hi Terence

Sorry if I sounded ungrateful for your reference . I was concentrating on the points you raised.

But I don’t think it is correct to say that “both the answers I [i.e. you] extracted should count as standard attempts to deal with your question”. In fact aesthetics has provided no answers to the question, standard or otherwise. The only book in Anglo-American aesthetics I am aware of that addresses the question of art and time is Anthony Savile’s The Test of Time and that was published way back in 1982 and in any case only skims the surface of the issues at stake. The question I’m addressing has been almost totally neglected – an astonishing state of affairs once one realizes the importance of what's involved. Analogies are dangerous in this area and I wouldn’t want this one stretched too far, but the present situation in aesthetics is rather like someone describing an aeroplane and forgetting to mention that it can fly.

You also say: “If your question is to be understood as presupposing that there must be a single explanation and that it must be distinctive to art, then I think most philosophers will not be sure if it is a good question, because they doubt the presuppositions.”

I see no reason at all why there should not be a single explanation (though this does not necessarily imply a simple one).  Nor why it should not be distinctive to art. If we think that one of the distinctive features of art is a capacity to transcend time – which I do, and which our experience plainly indicates is the case – it is surely quite natural to look for such an explanation, is it not? Why would we presume that there could not be a single fundamental cause distinctive to art?

(I have dealt with the different explanations suggested by the John Milliken in my reply to him.)

DA