Mr. Danto argues that recent developments in the artworld, in particular the production of works of art that cannot be told from ordinary things, make urgent the need for a new theory of art and make plain the factors such a theory can and cannot involve. In the course of constructing such a theory, he seeks to demonstrate the relationship between philosophy and art, as well as the connections that hold between art and social institutions and art history. The book (...) distinguishes what belongs to artistic theory from what has traditionally been confused with it, namely aesthetic theory and offers as well a systematic account of metaphor, expression, and style, together with an original account 0f artistic representation. A wealth of examples, drawn especially from recent and contemporary art, illuminate the argument. (shrink)

In the last thirty years, work in analytic philosophy of art has flourished, and it has given rise to considerably controversy. Stephen Davies describes and analyzes the definition of art as it has been discussed in Anglo-American philosophy during this period and, in the process, introduces his own perspective on ways in which we should reorient our thinking. Davies conceives of the debate as revealing two basic, conflicting approaches--the functional and the procedural--to the questions of whether art can be defined, (...) and if so, how. As the author sees it, the functionalist believes that an object is a work of art only if it performs a particular function (usually, that of providing a rewarding aesthetic experience). By contrast the proceduralist believes that something is an artwork only if it has been created according to certain rules and procedures. Davies attempts to demonstrate the fruitfulness of viewing the debate in terms of this framework, and he develops new arguments against both points of view--although he is more critical of functional than of procedural definitions. Because it has generated so much of the recent literature, Davies starts his analysis with a discussion of Morris Weitz's germinal paper, "The Role of Theory in Aesthetics." He goes on to examine other important works by Arthur Danto, George Dickie, and Ben Tilghman and develops in his critiques original arguments on such matters of the artificiality of artworks and the relevance of artists' intentions. (shrink)

Now it is of the utmost importance to observe that expressions peculiar to a science will possess meanings that are fixed by its own procedures, and that are therefore intelligible in terms of its own rules of usage, whether or not the science has ...