Formalist conceptions of aesthetic goals began to give way from the 17th century on to rationalist accounts of experience. “Beauty” as described as essential by Renaissance thinkers was reconceived as just one possibility, with the “sublime” in Burke's account as another. In the early 20th century Clive Bell again asserted a formalist position with his argument for “significant form.” The weakness of the formality position, and the need for a richer, more contextual account of aesthetic goals and experience is argued with reference to the idea of “thick” and “thin” concepts as applied by Bernard Williams to ethics, Wittgenstein's attention to the way in which language is used in a specific context, and Scruton's emphasis on an informed conception of the object of aesthetic attention. Beauty, in Alberti's procedural account if not in his version of the Platonic ideal, can be seen to continue to have critical value. The idea of “character,” however, offers a broader range of possibilities for experience and of goals for design.