In his introduction Dufrenne begins by consider how to begin. He distinguishes the type of aesthetic experience that is the province of the spectator from that of the creator and says that the aesthetic experience that will form his subject is the former.

There is, of course, an interesting study that could be made of the creative experience, but that is not ours.  We may have occasion to consider the creative side, insofar as the spectator may well presuppose the creative in order to have an authentic aesthetic experience. 

Best we can do, Dufrenne remarks, is to consider aesthetic experience as an experience of an aesthetic object.  This of course raises a host of problems.  There is a sort of circularity here.  But it is the standard circularity of subject and object, noesis and noema, for itself and in itself.  Dufrenne does not short these problems.  I think his idea is that the investigation of the aesthetic experience may give us some insight into the more general problem.  It is also the case that what has been accomplished in studying the more general problem (especially Sartre and Merleau-Ponty) will help in finding our way in the current setting.  Such as has shown that we can begin with a subject experiencing a world.  The aesthetic object is one possible object of experience, and that is the peculiar experience which is aesthetic. 

“We shall therefore start from the aesthetic object, defining it initially on the basis of the work of art."(li) Defining it, but not identifying it.  The work of art is the worldly object.  As such it can be the object of attention of various sorts.  A work of art experienced in an appropriate way becomes and aesthetic object.  Prior to that it is a work of art.  Dufrenne means work of art.  He excludes as derivative the notion of aesthetic objects in nature.  The “aesthetic experience” we might have of such natural objects is too easily confused with other experiences to serve as the basis for an investigation into pure aesthetic experience.