 Numerous commentators have argued against the view that Shaftesbury advances the notion of aesthetic disinterestedness (see Townsend 1982; Rind 2002; Mortensen 1995; Arregui and Arnan 1994; White 1973; Axelsson 2019: 180–4). In contrast, they take Shaftesbury to hold that the value of aesthetic beauty is entirely instrumental. On this anti-Stolnitzian view, Shaftesbury intends to contrast an appreciation of an object’s beauty only with certain vicious or selfish concerns, not with all non-aesthetic considerations whatsoever. An appreciation of beauty, on this reading of Shaftesbury, is “not to be identified with luxury, covetousness, avarice, ostentation, and similar … immoral qualities” (Mortensen 1994: 637; see also Rind 2002: 72–3). But an appreciation of beauty can and should involve consideration of virtue and the improvement of moral character. Townsend says that Shaftesbury does not ever truly give “disinterestedness a special significance. It is not really proposed as any kind of test, nor does it characterize a special class of perceptions or judgments. It is much more important to Shaftesbury to determine what our true interests are” (Townsend 1982: 211). The editors of the Standard Edition write in their preface to the volume on Shaftesbury’s aesthetics, “for Shaftesbury the enjoyment of art was never to be an end in itself, but had always to serve a moral purpose (Second Characters: 18). Derhmann says that Shaftesbury believed that ”Art is merely the means to a further end,“ where that end is moral improvement” (2014: 48). In explicit attack on Stolnitz, Mortensen writes, “On the contrary, Shaftesbury’s aim was to situate the contemplation of art within a morality acceptable to his contemporaries” (1994: 631). According to Mortensen, Shaftesbury’s goal was to give a “moral defense of the appreciation of art,” according to which art appreciation is justified by its capacity to improve moral character.