Some thinkers about literature regard the aesthetic approach to literary art as the only valid one. They adopt what I have called "the delightful-object view" of literature and maintain that application is not aesthetically relevant, since application is not concerned with the aesthetic aspect of literature.¹ This is the aesthetic argument against application, intrinsically related to, but not identical with, the textual-supremacy argument. As I emphasized in Chapter 7, "aesthetic" can be understood in several ways, and application is easy to reconcile with weaker versions of the aesthetic approach to literature. Yet the strong, "delightful-object" variety of the aesthetic approach is, by definition, impossible to combine with a belief in the artistic and aesthetic importance of application.