This essay develops the final chapter in my recent book, Sensibility and Sense: The Aesthetic Transformation of the Human World (Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic, 2010). I acknowledge with appreciation the similitude of my title and subject to Jacques Rancière’s Le partage du sensible; esthétique et politique, although the inquiry here is independent of his. I also want to acknowledge with gratitude the valuable assistance of Yuriko Saito and Riva Berleant in refining this essay.