 The prevailing answer to the aesthetic question is aesthetic formalism, the view that aesthetic value is aesthetic because objects bear it in virtue of their perceptual properties, where these encompass visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, and tactile properties. Aesthetic formalism rose to prominence when and because artistic formalism did, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries (see Section 5.1). Because everyone then took artistic value to be a species of aesthetic value, artistic formalism could gain prominence only by dragging aesthetic formalism in its train. But whereas artistic formalism has since fallen from favor, aesthetic formalism has held its ground. The explanation, arguably, has to do with the way aesthetic formalism honors the conceptual link between the aesthetic and the perceptual. Any adequate answer to the aesthetic question must meet what we may call the perceptual constraint, that is, it must plausibly articulate the sense in which aesthetic value is perceptual. Aesthetic formalism does this in the clearest possible terms.