 On the basis of these passages, Stolnitz argues that Shaftesbury lays the groundwork for the idea that aesthetic responses are essentially “disinterested” (Stolnitz 1961a and b; see also Glauser 2002 and Savile 2002.) Shaftesbury, according to Stolnitz, was the first to develop this concept, which “is nowhere to be found in classical and medieval aesthetics. It is Shaftesbury who claims the distinction of being the first thinker to bring the phenomenon of disinterestedness to light and analyzing it” (Stolnitz 1961a: 100). Appreciation of beauty, on this view, has nothing to do with thoughts about any instrumental purpose a work of art may serve, not to do with the promotion of ends of any kind. Someone might value an artwork because it will improve morals, or make money, or teach history, or inspire religious adoration. But its aesthetic value is utterly distinct from any of those. “Aesthetic perception looks to no consequences ulterior to itself” (Stolnitz 1961a: 108). According to this idea, which Stolnitz takes to be the defining feature of modern aesthetic theory, an aesthetic response is a response solely to the intrinsic features of an object, independent of any other type of consideration, such as the object’s utility to the perceiver or to society, its moral value, or its capacity to increase knowledge. Aesthetics, on this view, is autonomous, self-contained, impersonal, non-instrumental. Stolnitz is careful (in a way that some of his critics have failed to note) not to claim that Shaftesbury himself held exactly this aesthetic view. What Stolnitz claims, rather, is that Shaftesbury’s distinguishing of perceptions of beauty and judgments of self-interest was a crucial influence on the disinterested aesthetic views that would come later, even if Shaftesbury himself also held views that did not fit with those later views (Stolnitz 1961a: 100 and 108).