Abstract
Nelson Goodman's view of the artwork as an aesthetic symbol shows significant likenesses with a more than thirty years older aesthetic theory of a Czech structuralist Jan Mukařovský. Despite this considerable similarity the analysis provided by Mukařovský fulfills conditions of the so-called aesthetic conception of art unexceptionally, whereas Goodman is usually taken to be a typical proponent of the cognitivist critique of the aesthetic conception.
In this article I call this interpretation of Goodman's approach in question and endeavour to show that, if his view of the way the aesthetic symbol functions is taken seriously, his theory belongs to the former camp rather than to the latter, i. e., his stance on the relevance of the aesthetic conception of art is actually as affirmative as the one of Mukařovský.