The starting in 1960 of the British Journal of Aesthetics was a courageous act. In those days people liked to call aesthetics a ‘dreary’ intellectual region, and high-flying philosophers seldom descended into it. But when in the decade that followed new philosophy departments were created and old ones expanded, aesthetics took up some of the spare capacity. Courses were laid on, and books and articles appeared which could match the quality of work in better established branches of philosophy like ethics and epistemology. The question now is whether the lean years which have begun will eat up the fat years of the sixties and seventies. As courses are cut and vacancies left unfilled, aesthetics is likely to be the first branch of philosophy to suffer.