Nombreuses sont les contradictions imputées à l’œuvre de Danto, telles, pour les plus spectaculaires, « ontologie versus historicisme » ou « essentialisme versus contextualisme », voire « substantialisme versus pluralisme postmoderne ». Pour tenter de sortir de ces paradoxes, qui qualifient trop souvent le cheminement de Danto, nous tentons de revenir à l’exacte nature de son essentialisme qui, ouvrant (1981) et fermant (2013) sa réflexion sur l’art, en constitue l’armature profonde. Nous montrons, chemin faisant, comment la clarification de cet « (...) essentialisme » permet de relativiser, voire de pulvériser, certaines des plus lourdes contradictions qui lui sont reprochées. (shrink)

1. Introduction It has become a commonplace that philosophy has a special connection to its history. This relation has been addressed in various ways, but I will concentrate on one line of conversation, which has concentrated on two methods of reading historical writings: rational and historical reconstructions. These two genres of the historiography of philosophy are often taken as a starting point, even if one goes on to question the confrontation between the two methods. The most influenti...

“'Ontological Mislocations', Modes of Conciousness and History: Indiscernibles, Displacement and Horizons of Possibility in the Philosophy of Arthur Danto”. In this article my purpose is to trace the links between three key elements in Arthur Danto’s philosophy: first, the capital consideration, for philosophical purposes, of human beings as ens representans , departing from the elucidation of a type of cognitive episode that Danto called “basic”. Secondly,I am concerned with the recurring appeal to a plane of consciousness that supports a dual (...) characterization in terms of the pair inside/outside and enables alogical space that is characteristic of philosophy as a reflective mode. Finally, I will treat a form of cognitive failure that Danto considered fundamental to the philosophical perspective, which leads to a specific type of restructuring of our ordinary system of beliefs. What I contend is that in Danto’s philosophical system these three elements become intelligible from the postulation of an effectual background that the author calls “objective historical structure”, which is characterized in terms of the horizons of possibility and impossibility that it delineates. These figures of historical-temporal possibility and impossibility constitute the matrix of historicity itself and also contribute decisively to shaping the permanent nucleus of dantean philosophical concerns. (shrink)

This essay constructs philosophical defenses against criticisms of my theory of the end of art. These have to do with the definition of art; the concept of artistic quality; the role of aesthetics; the relationship between philosophy and art; how to answer the question "But is it art?"; the difference between the end of art and "the death of painting"; historical imagination and the future; the method of using indiscernible counterparts, like Warhol's Brillo Box and the Brillo cartons it resembles; (...) the logic of imitation-and the differences between Hegel's views on the end of art and mine. These defenses amplify and fortify the thesis of the end of art as set forth in my After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History (1997). (shrink)

In 1964, when Danto first encountered Warhol's Brillo Box, Jasper Johns made a painting titled According to What. Danto's new book After the End of Art also provokes this question because in his restatement of Hegel's verdict on art's historical role he drops an essential part of the implied definition of art: the issue of adequacy between content and presentation. Why dispense with this crucial point of quality judgment? My critique falls into three parts. The first part shows how the (...) whole historical argument rests upon a shift of criteria. According to Hegel art reached its highest point of achievement in classical antiquity when adequate embodiment seemed indispensable to the presence of the spirit. It subsequently lost this exclusive rank-first through Christianity, then through modern philosophy-when a new spiritual self-awareness emerged which no longer seemed to need external manifestation. Although Danto disputes the concept of absolute self-possession as the metaphysical vanishing point of Hegel's construction, he nevertheless subscribes to its apparent evidence in late twentieth-century art and culture. In the second part I discuss the characteristic distortions of Hegelian-type historicism and confront them with both the obvious misrepresentation of the works of art themselves and the different code of conduct in practical art history. This leads to a rather disenchanting conclusion: according to an old, deeply ingrained philosophical prejudice there is no problem about quality in art, because the true yardstick and fulfillment of art is philosophy itself. The final part tries to unpick this tangle by showing that there was in fact, contemporaneous with Hegel, a remarkably different interpretation of the self-same auspices of modern art which comes much closer to its actual achievements, and this without denying the basic philosophical predicament of which Danto has reminded us. (shrink)

Arthur C. Danto has long defended essentialism in the philosophy of art, yet he has been interpreted by many as a historicist. This essentialism/historicism conflict in the interpretation of his work reflects the same conflict both within his thought and, more importantly, within modern art itself. Danto's strategy for resolving this conflict involves, among other things, a Bildungsroman of modern art failing to discover its essence, an essentialist definition of art provided by philosophy which is indemnified against history, and a (...) thesis about the end of art once it has been defined. Is this strategy successful, or does it result, as I argue, in a philosophical disenfranchisement of art of precisely the type that Danto himself has criticized? (shrink)

In this article I will discuss some systematic issues of Arthur Danto's philosophy of art and art history from a Hegelian perspective. Belonging to "Absolute Spirit," art can be called a "spiritual kind." Since spiritual kinds are reflective and self-determining, they are not susceptible to philosophical definition. Nevertheless, elements of essentialism can be maintained when describing art's historicity and conceptual structure. To this end, "art" can be interpreted as a two-tier concept: in inherently reflecting its concept, it projects its own (...) conditions into the past, co-opting "prehistorical" artworks as predecessors and classical examples. Hegel's view of art as conceptually structured in itself can have disenfranchising or reenfranchising consequences: either reducing art to minor philosophy, or acknowledging its privileged access to its own essence. After Danto's detachment of the philosophy of art from aesthetics, Hegel would himself be deprived of the possibility to "define" art by intuition . Even if the spirit consists of essential kinds, philosophy is not in a privileged position to establish the essence of art and thus the difference between art and philosophy. Rather, philosophy must acknowledge art as a neighbor and as partner in a dialogue. (shrink)

La filosofía analítica de la historia de Danto intenta resolver el problema del límite lógico de la historia a partir de la elaboración de la frase narrativa. Dicha solución implica el rechazo de cualquier tipo de filosofía substantiva de la historia a causa de su compromiso teórico con el realismo narrativo y la transgresión de los límites del lenguaje histórico. Sin embargo, con su filosofía del arte tendrá que garantizar la validez de la filosofía substantiva de la historia, para así (...) poder comprender la frase narrativa desde el realismo narrativo a partir de la diferencia entre history e story. (shrink)

https://revistes.uab.cat/enrahonar/article/view/v32-33-davies.

cannot grasp what is at stake in it without taking both its claims and its tone seriously. Read philosophically, Danto wants to reconceive art’s aesthetic dimension as those features that ‘inflect’ our attitude towards a work’s meaning, and to distinguish, in so doing, between beauty that is and beauty that is not internal to that meaning. Although welcome, I argue that his attempt to carry this through is compromised by his countervailing tendency to conceive the aesthetic in non-cognitive terms. Read (...) as a work of philosophical confession, on the other hand, I suggest that Danto’s late turn to aesthetics may be illuminated through a comparison with Philip Guston’s late turn to figuration. To do so, I draw parallels between Guston’s development as a painter and Danto’s philosophical trajectory. Danto concludes that, though necessary to life, beauty is not necessary to art; I conclude that, on this account, only an aesthetic art makes a warranted claim on our attention. (shrink)

In this paper I interpret Arthur Danto’s thesis on “the end of art” in eschatological terms. He allows for this by having chosen Joachim of Fiore’s theological theory of the three ages to illuminate his own understanding of art history. I offer some ideas on how this post-history might be understood by means of theological method. I also explore the relationship between the concept of “tradition” and Danto’s concept of “transfiguration.” By means of these analyses I bring out the tendency (...) in contemporary analytical philosophy of art to interpret the work of art via theological categories. I consider this to be another argument in favor of the view that art has taken the place of religion in the philosophical consciousness. (shrink)

In Bielefeld, Germany in April, 1997 an author conference was devoted to Arthur C. Danto's 1995 Mellon Lectures After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History . This essay provides an introduction to seven essays given at that conference and expanded for this Theme Issue of History and Theory. Danto presented his view of the nature of art in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace . He then added in the Mellon lectures a sociological perspective on the (...) current situation of the visual arts, and an Hegelian historiography. The history of art has ended, Danto claims, and we now live in a posthistorical era. Since in his well-known book on historiography, Analytical Philosophy of History , Danto is unsympathetic to Hegel's speculative ways of thinking about history, his adaptation of this Hegelian framework is surprising. Danto's strategy in After the End of Art is best understood by grasping the way in which he transformed the purely philosophical account of The Transfiguration into a historical account. Recognizing that his philosophical analysis provided a good way of explaining the development of art in the modern period, Danto radically changed the context of his argument. In this process, he opened up discussion of some serious but as yet unanswered questions about his original thesis, and about the plausibility of Hegel's claim that the history of art has ended. (shrink)

In Bielefeld, Germany in April, 1997 an author conference was devoted to Arthur C. Danto's 1995 Mellon Lectures After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History. This essay provides an introduction to seven essays given at that conference and expanded for this Theme Issue of History and Theory. Danto presented his view of the nature of art in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. He then added in the Mellon lectures a sociological perspective on the current situation (...) of the visual arts, and an Hegelian historiography. The history of art has ended, Danto claims, and we now live in a posthistorical era. Since in his well-known book on historiography, Analytical Philosophy of History, Danto is unsympathetic to Hegel's speculative ways of thinking about history, his adaptation of this Hegelian framework is surprising. Danto's strategy in After the End of Art is best understood by grasping the way in which he transformed the purely philosophical account of The Transfiguration into a historical account. Recognizing that his philosophical analysis provided a good way of explaining the development of art in the modern period, Danto radically changed the context of his argument. In this process, he opened up discussion of some serious but as yet unanswered questions about his original thesis, and about the plausibility of Hegel's claim that the history of art has ended. (shrink)

El presente artículo se propone mostrar la vinculación conceptual que se establece en el conjunto de la obra de Arthur Danto –un autor clave en la consideración analítica del concepto de representación- entre asimetrías cognitivas, teoría de la representación y criterio transfigurativo de realidad. Esa articulación nos entrega un modelo de particular predilección por las asimetrías cognitivas vinculadas a la estructura trágica, que es limitativa de las posibilidades aventuradas por el mismo Danto respecto de nuestra capacidad para captar la apertura (...) e incompletud de nuestra aprehensión de la historia. (shrink)

The place that Arthur Danto gives to history, as constitutive to as and our world, as well as a discipline able to produce knowledge of the past, reach its cenit with his philosophy of art. In “the End of Art”, Danto announces an end of the history of the search of the philosophical definition of art and the beginning of the era of pluralism. It is in this account where essencialism and historicism are combined in a way that estimules a (...) heat debate that continues today. In this paper, I give a reconstruction of Danto’s Philosophy of historical language in order to show why this combination is possible and which compromises that should be assumed by an authentic historicism. (shrink)