At least since the Enlightenment, aesthetics has suffered from what Gadamer calls a "subjectivism" that relegates aesthetics to a theory of judgments based on feeling, where feelings are regarded as non-cognitive, non-rational, and private. I argue, to the contrary, that aesthetics lies at the heart of our capacity for meaningful experience. Aesthetics concerns the patterns, images, feelings, qualities, and emotions by which meaning is possible for us in every aspect of our lives. Empirical research from cognitive science reinforces this picture of the pervasiveness of aesthetic conditions that emerge from the nature of our bodies, our brains, and the structured environments we inhabit. Following Dewey, I then suggest that the arts constitute exemplary achievements of human meaning-making, which is a process that draws on all of the aesthetic dimensions that make up our mundane experience. Consequently, in any adequate account of mind, thought, language, or values, aesthetics moves from the periphery to center stage as the key to our capacity for meaning, imagination, and creativity.