On Beardsley's view of the artistic process

In his essay "On the Creation of ART" Monroe Beardsley, probably the best known American philosopher working in the field of aesthetics, is setting himself the task of inquiring into the creative process "between the incept (short for: inceptive element) and the final touch" asking "how the work of art itself comes into existence and takes on its character through the stages or phases of this process." After an interval of more than two decades I would like to offer a few belated comments on Beardsley's ideas, since it seems to me that characteristic differences between American and German thought on this central issue of aesthetics can be shown by this.