From a Hegelian perspective, Duchamp’s place in the development of the contemporary involves a synthesis of the satiric and ironic modes of art’s previous moments of dissolution. That reading reworks the theme of art’s dissolution into an analytic tool, and saves the concept of “the end of art” from being a mere slogan, one that’s charged with nostalgia and despair, but of ambiguous value as a term of art-historical and aesthetic understanding. However, once we address art in terms a systematic (...) reading of Hegel’s Lectures, we’ll finally begin to understand the potential for applying Hegel’s concept of the dissolution to the contemporary artworld. A Hegelian understanding of irony and satire will allow us to grasp historically, as a replaying of the moment of art’s dissolution, the advent of Marcel Duchamp. For better or for worse, it is in large part Duchamp’s synthesis of the satirical and ironic dissolutions of art that define contemporary art. The revised Hegelian approach that emerges is not merely critical of the contemporary, however, but is also equipped to understand and appreciate it, prepared to retain its most valuable possibilities, and thereby able to remain hopeful about what lies beyond. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:Hegel's end-of-art thesis is arguably the most notorious assertion in aesthetics. I outline traditional interpretive strategies before offering an original alternative to these. I develop a conception of art that facilitates a reading of Hegel on which he is able to embrace three seemingly contradictory theses about art, namely, (i) the end-of-art thesis, (ii) the continued significance of art for its own sake (autonomy thesis), and (iii) the necessity of art for robust knowledge (epistemicnecessity thesis). I argue that (...) Hegel is able to embrace all three theses at once through a conception of the work of art as an internally purposive whole (what I call the "IP View" of art). On the IP View, because of the kind of wholes that artworks are, they (i.a) are valuable for their own sake as ends-in-themselves, (i.b) yield valuable experiences because they are valuable for their own sake, and thereby (i.c) are necessary for robust knowledge. Finally, I suggest that not only does Hegel appear to hold the IP View of art, but also that on such a view, there is a very sensible reason for affirming (one reading of) Hegel's end-of-art thesis as an important means to establishing art's actual significance for robust knowledge against soaring, but unsubstantiable, claims about art's potency with respect to robust knowledge. (shrink)

This chapter presents the meeting points and conflicts between Arthur Danto’s philosophy of art and George Dickie’s avowedly succeeding theory. Its focus is on the internalist-externalist debate on the ontology of the artwork as created and perceived within the artworld. It shows that both Danto and Dickie developed anti-formalist theories, that contributed to the demise of aesthetic modernism. Inverting the formalist distinction between internal and external properties of the artwork, they classified the sensuous properties of the artwork as (...) secondary in its essence and identity. Accordingly, Danto and Dickie’s definitions of art emerged from the challenge “to be consistent with art appearing in every possible way.” Both negated the Neo-Wittgensteinians’s proposal to forgo the project of defining art and found the then-new pluralism to be revealing of the essence of art, directing philosophy to art’s nonexhibited infrastructure – beyond the reach of the eye. Across from this, the chapter presents their opposing ideas as revealed through different analyses of the concept of the “artworld”: as an intellectual sphere by Danto versus an institutional one by Dickie. Danto’s internalist/intentionalist ontology begins with the mental and stretches to its embodying material. Opposing it, Dickie’s externalist ontology points to social practices as constituting the artwork, which is attributed with the status of “arthood” by agents in its social sphere. Accordingly, I claim, Danto’s ontology is more versatile than Dickie’s. -/- . (shrink)

Arthur Danto’s recent book, Andy Warhol, leads the reader through the story of the iconic American’s artistic life highlighted by a philosophical commentary, a commentary that merges Danto’s aesthetic theory with the artist himself. Inspired by Warhol’s Brillo Box installation, art that in Danto’s eyes was indiscernible from the everyday boxes it represented, Danto developed a theory that is able to differentiate art from non-art by employing the body of conceptual art theory manifest in what he (...) termed the ‘artworld’. The strength of Danto’s theory is found in its ability to explain the art of the post-modern era. His body of work weaves philosophy, art history and art criticism together, merging his aesthetic philosophy with his extensive knowledge of the world of art. Danto’s essentialist theory of embodied meaning provides him with a critical tool that succeeds in explaining the currents of contemporary art, a task that many great thinkers of art history were unable to do. If Warhol inspired Danto to create a philosophy of art, it is appropriate that Danto write a tribute to Warhol that traces how Warhol brought philosophy into art. Danto’s account of ‘Warhol as philosopher’ positions him as a pivotal figure in the history of twentieth-century art, effecting a sea change in how art was made and viewed. Warhol achieved this by conceiving of works that embodied the answers to a series of philosophical puzzles surrounding the nature of art. Warhol, as Danto describes him, manifests himself in his art because he had transformed himself, in a way, into an icon of the times. This pragmatist notion that art should undermine the dichotomies that exist between art and life would, by some accounts, position Warhol to be the philosopher that Danto claims him to be, for he dissolved the philosophical questions posted by late modern aesthetic thinkers by creating art that imploded the accepted notions of art at the time. One of Danto’s greatest contributions to aesthetics is his theory’s ability to distinguish art from non-art, recognizing that it is the artist’s intention that levels the sublimity of art into the commonplace, thereby transfiguring the everyday. However, acknowledging this achievement, I argue that Warhol’s philosophical contribution actually manifests itself in a manner different from that proposed by Danto. Danto maintains that the internal drive of art leads to the unfolding of art theoretical concepts that ineluctably shift the terrain of world of art. I would agree with Danto that Warhol, almost as Hegel viewed Napoleon as Geist on a horse, pushed forward the boundaries of art through the actualization of art’s internal drive. But I would disagree that the conceptual nature of art is one that unfolds merely as a relation of concepts that artists trace through a connection to the meaning of history they forge using their unmediated grasp of style. Rather, I would argue that the artist’s style is not bound so narrowly to the meanings they express. Through their aesthetic articulations, artists initiate a process of social interaction. This process employs the philosophical logic which Danto attributes to Warhol indirectly, and through it, it is able to transfigure the vocabulary of art—the concepts of the artworld—by superseding the language of modernism. Warhol’s philosophical contribution is seen in his mastery of both the medium of art and the underlying logic of the medium’s expression and reception. (shrink)

A sustained challenge to the view that artworks are physical objects relates to the alleged inability of physical objects to possess representational properties, which some artworks clearly do possess. I argue that the challenge is subject to confusions about representational properties and aesthetic experience. I show that a challenge to artwork-object identity put forward by Danto is vulnerable to a similar criticism. I conclude by noting that the identity of artworks and physical objects is consistent with (...) the insight that attending exclusively to the object’s individual physical properties may prevent us from grasping the nature of the work. // Contre l’opinion voulant que les œuvres d’art soient des objets physiques, d’aucuns font régulièrement valoir la présumée incapacité des objets physiques à possedér des propriétés représentationnelles, propriétés que certaines œuvres d’art possèdent a l’evidence. Je fais valoir que cette remise en question est sujette à des confusions à propos des propriétés représentationnelles et de l’experience esthétique. Je montre que de même, la remise en question par Danto de l’identité œuvre d’art-objet prête le flanc à une critique similaire. Je conclus pour finir que l’identité entre œuvres d’art et objets physiques est compatible avec l’intuition voulant que prêter attention exclusivement aux propriétés physiques d’un certain objet peut nous empêcher de saisir la nature de l’œuvre. (shrink)

Arthur C. Danto did not live to witness the proliferation of AI in artistic creation. However, his philosophy of art offers key ideas about art that can provide an interesting perspective on artwork generated by artificial intelligence (AI). In this article, I analyze how his ideas about contemporary art, intention, interpretation, and authorship could be applied to the ongoing debate about AI and artistic creation. At the same time, it is also interesting to consider whether the incorporation of AI (...) into artistic creation marks a new chapter in the narrative, which seems to have reached its end, or if it represents a significant rupture with past artistic traditions. (shrink)

Arthur Danto’s analytic theory of art relies on a form of artistic interpretation that requires access to the art theoretical concepts of the artworld, ‘an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld’. Art, in what Danto refers to as post-history, has become theoretical, yet it is here contended that his explanation of the artist’s creative style lacks a theoretical dimension. This article examines Danto’s account of style in light of the role (...) the artistic metaphor plays in the interpretation of the artwork, arguing that it is unable to account for the metaphorical power he claims is embedded within the work of art. An artist’s style issues from a unique perspective, the way an artist inhabits a specific spot in history. Though each person has such a perspective, when applied aesthetically, it is the key to the articulation of a unique historical meaning in the work of art. At the same time, artists’ knowledge of their contribution remains cut off from this perspective, for they are unaware of their self-manifestation of the historical concept of style. This article makes the case that Danto’s notion of style, based on Sartre’s notion of being-for-itself, cannot fulfil the role he allots it in his theory because, at some level, artists must apprehend their style to create a work of art capable of functioning critically as a countertext. It is only through the apprehension of their style, and dialogical activity that takes place between the artist and the beholders, that the unseen body of artworld theory is formed. Without this, when oriented to the aesthetic, style provides no concept or theory for the mind to behold. This article presents an alternative approach to style that recognizes the role of theory in the creation of metaphor, which would circumvent this problem. (shrink)

Hegel believed the Antigone tragedy not only revealed the national spirit of ancient Greece but was indeed the greatest artwork of all time. displaying the “Logic of History”, was the critical role Antigone tragedy played in the phenomenology of spirit from the standpoint of Hegel. This article will attempt to answer how Hegel reads Antigone's tragedy and how he observes the “Logic of History” in it. Ancient Greek society, In Hegel’s point of view, has constantly been (...) the symbol of “unity of life”. however, Hegel believes that at certain times in history, this unity of ethical life and its state of joy in Greece has been destroyed. Since Hegel believes literary works have historical-cultural implications and considers art and literature as the first medium by which the spirit becomes self-conscious, in the section “True Spirit, ethical Life” from the book Phenomenology of Spirit, he describes the fall of the ethical life of Greek society by reading of the Antigone tragedy. What Hegel understood from the Antigone tragedy was a series of painful conflicts that ensued as a consequence of a contradiction between ethical powers within Greek society. powers that had heretofore been in unreflected unity, but now that their contradictions revealed, the ethical life of society collapsed and the spirit moved to a more rational and liberated stage. These stages are in fact very much the irreversible final course of history toward achieving freedom. (shrink)

The article re-visits the different scholarly approaches to Hegel's end-of-art scenario, and then proposes a new reading whereby ending and finitude are presented as essential features of beautiful art. The first and most determinant of art's endings is the death of the Christly art object, not representations of Christ, but the actual death of (the son of) God himself as the last classical artwork. The death of God represents the last word in Greco-Roman art, the accomplishment of the beautiful (...) individuality and its failure to present the Absolute in a singular, naturally infected, lively, human (made) form. The ending of art brings about a new form of the sacred: the representational language of revelatory religion. The ongoing production of modern artistic forms is a feature of actuality ("Wirklichkeit") and as such is condemned to an infinite approximation of what has been. Such actuality nonetheless "ends" in the ironic discourse of contemporary artistic expression, which Hegel qualifies as a "Vereitelung". The final realization of the beautiful art form, as a human-informed singularity embodying absolute content, may well be the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, whose performative iteration takes place in the form of "worship" practiced in the modern, state university. (shrink)

This article owes a lot to Arthur C. Danto's heuristic writings about the Artworld, which have shown us, that the ontological status of works of art is, at least when we discuss some current, maybe even dominating trends in contemporary art, dependent on our more or less philosophical interpretations of them. The effects of the Dantoan atmosphere of theory and art historical consciousness are, still, decisive for just some contemporary art. Danto's interest in the philosophical side of contemporary (...) art makes his philosophy of art exclusive in relation to art which is less philosophically appealing than the readymade tradition, to the extent that Danto did not, for a long time, even try to incorporate problems of beauty, aesthetic experience, and formal qualities, to his theory of the Artworld. (Opening paragraph.). (shrink)

740 page life in letters, including all Hegel's available letters at time of publication by Indiana University Press in 1984 tied together by a running commentary by Clark Butler. The volume is in a searchable PDF format. Publication was supported by a Major Grant by the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH).

This book’s goal is to give an intellectual context for the following manuscript. -/- Includes bibliographical references and an index. Pages 1-123. 1). Philosophy. 2). Metaphysics. 3). Philosophy, German. 4). Philosophy, German -- 18th century. 5). Philosophy, German and Greek Influences Metaphysics. I. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich -- 1770-1831 -- Das älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus. II. Rosenzweig, Franz, -- 1886-1929. III. Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von, -- 1775-1854. IV. Hölderlin, Friedrich, -- 1770-1843. V. Ferrer, Daniel Fidel, 1952-. [Translation (...) from German into English of the-- Das älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus.]. -/- Note: the manuscript is in the handwriting of G.W.F. Hegel, but the actual authorship is disputed. No date is given. Franz Rosenzweig made up the title as it is known today. He published the text in 1917. At that time, F. Rosenzweig thought F.W.J. Schelling was the author. No one has read this book for errors. As always, any errors, mistakes or oversights etc. are mine alone. Given a couple more years, I could improve this book. This is a philosophical translation and not a philological translation. Martin Luther who did the famous early translation of the Bible into German wrote in a letter, “If anyone does not like my translation, they can ignore it… (September 15, 1530)”. There are no ‘correct’ translations. Some are just better than other translations. -/- The Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism. The German title is: Das Älteste Systemprogramm Des Deutschen Idealismus. This title was made up by Franz Rosenzweig in 1917, when he first published the manuscript. He found the manuscript in the Royal Library in Berlin in 1913. The manuscript suggested date is around 1796 and was done by handwriting research. However, the manuscript is not dated. The Prussian State Library auctioned in March 1913 from the auction of the house Liepmannssohn in Berlin a single sheet on the front and back with Hegel's cursive handwriting. The manuscript was lost during WWII. But Dieter Henrich found it again in 1979 in the “Biblioteka Jagiellonska” in Krakow (Poland), where it is today. Address: Jagiellonian Library, Jagiellonian University, al. Mickiewicza 22, 30-059 Cracow, Poland. Later research suggests that manuscript had come from the estate of Hegel’s student Friedrich Christoph Förster (1791-1868). He was one of the editors of Hegel’s posthumous works and most likely had access to a number of Hegel’s manuscripts. This text actually being one of them. Hegel traveled around Bohemia with Marie and Friedrich Christoph Förster around the year 1820-21 (see Klaus Vieweg). -/- Philosophical mystery -- who is the author or authors of this text? -/- Take a plunge into the deep and cold waters. Maybe a quagmire or quandary, but decidedly interesting. This project is to contextualize an old handwritten manuscript which is about 225 years old. The actual author is a mystery. I offer my own assessment. You can make your own assessments. The mystery has continued to unfold since 1917. There is plenty to read. Otherwise, think about the authorship and read more of the German philosophers and authors from this period and enjoy the depth of thinking and philosophizing. On one hand, there is just the sheer fun in the puzzle of the authorship questions; and on the other hand, these are the alluring thoughts that lead to the nascent stage of German Idealism and our intellectual heritage. There is no end to the accolades for this group of philosophers. A heritage that we still hear in in our attempts to move forward into our future. -/- Do your own astute exegesis (ἐξήγησις) as all paths are still open. Let your thought take to the wings of what is called thinking with this text. Critical encounters (Auseinandersetzung, or a Gegenüberstellung) with at least: Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854), and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) --- starts here! German Idealism. We are not going to study this situation endlessly, instead we make some broad strokes and provide you a general context. You are allowed to read between the lines too. Goal: to understand the overall affinity and differences between the intellectuals of this period in German history; and to come to grips with this demanding text within its large scholarly context in the last 100 years. There are no final answers. (shrink)

Arthur C. Danto proposes a complex and controversial relationship between surface and deep interpretations in The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (1986). We detail the analogy between understanding human actions and interpreting works of art that both develops a motivation for Danto's view and clarifies it. We object to the most plausible version of content dependency among surface and deep interpretations and in so doing, we also clarify the way in which an interpretation is constitutive of an artwork.

If artworks and their aesthetic properties stand in constitutive relationships to historical context and circumstances, so that some understanding of relevant facts is involved in responding to a work, what becomes of the intuitive view that we see artworks and at least some of their aesthetic properties? This question is raised by arguments in both aesthetics and art history for the historical nature of works of art. The paper argues that the answer needs to take philosophy of perception (...) into account. The principal development that has shaped philosophy of perception in the last thirty years—explaining perceptual experience in terms of contents that represent that such-and-such is the case—is directly relevant to key arguments for the historical nature of art because contents can represent complex kinds and properties. Conceptual realism is especially well-suited for explaining perception of artworks and aesthetic properties because it emphasizes that forms of understanding—in the sense of capacities, abilities and techniques—are involved in perceptual engagement with individual objects and instances of properties. To make this case, the paper examines influential arguments for the historical nature of art and aesthetic properties by Arthur C. Danto and Kendall L. Walton; and examines art-historical discussions by Michael Baxandall, Linda Nochlin and T. J. Clark. The paper argues that the aesthetic properties of an artwork depend on human intentional uses of properties, colours and contours among them, and such uses may themselves be aesthetic. The Wittgensteinian notion of use is contextual and historical, and uses are perceptible. (shrink)

According to Arthur Danto, it is illegitimate to seek a neutral, or pre-interpretative, description of an artwork, since such descriptions necessarily fail to respect the artwork as such. Instead, we must begin by interpreting, so as to constitute the work : interpretation is what distinguishes artworks from mere physical objects. In this paper, I argue that, while Danto is right to distance artworks from mere things, this can be done without suggesting that artworks are constituted (...) by interpretation. Moreover, Danto’s view leaves us unable to account for the fact that interpretations are constrained to be responsive to the work’s features. I demonstrate that, by appealing to conventions of description that are specific to art, it is possible to offer a neutral description that respects the work as an artwork. This view accords with our common sense understanding of the relation between description and interpretation, and avoids the unfortunate consequences of Danto’s theory. // Selon Arthur Danto, il est illégitime de chercher une description « neutre » ou préinterprétative d’une oeuvre d’art, parce qu’une telle description ne peut respecter l’oeuvre d’art en tant que telle. Nous ne pouvons aborder une oeuvre sans l’interpréter, puisque l’interprétation constitue l’oeuvre d’art et distingue celle-ci d’un simple objet physique. Dans cet article je soutiens que, bien que Danto ait raison de vouloir distinguer les oeuvres d’art des simples choses, on peut effectuer cette distinction sans conclure que les oeuvres d’art sont constituées par l’interprétation. Je soutiens en outre que le point de vue de Danto ne nous permet pas de tenir compte du fait que les interprétations doivent respecter les caractéristiques de l’oeuvre. Je montre qu’en faisant appel aux conventions de description spécifiques à l’art, on peut proposer une description neutre qui respecte l’oeuvre d’art en tant qu’oeuvre. Mon point de vue est conforme à la relation généralement admise entre la description et l’interprétation des oeuvres d’art, et évite les conséquences négatives de la théorie de Danto. (shrink)

Arthur Danto argued from the premiss that artworks are essentially cognitive to the conclusion that they are incidentally aesthetic. I wonder why Danto, and the very many of us he persuaded, came to believe that the cognitive and the aesthetic oppose one another. I argue, contrary to Danto’s historical claims, that the cognitive and the aesthetic did not come into opposition until the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, and that they were brought into opposition for (...) reasons of art-critical expediency rather than philosophical necessity. I conclude that a robustly cognitive notion of the aesthetic remains an option for us. (shrink)

I investigate the role of feminist theorizing in relation to traditionally-based aesthetics. Feminist artworks have arisen within the context of a patriarchal Artworld dominated for thousands of years by male artists, critics, theorists, and philosophers. I look at the history of that context as it impacts philosophical theorizing by pinpointing the narrow range of the paradigms used in defining “art.” I test the plausibility of Danto’s After the End of Art vision of a post-historical, pluralistic future in which (...) “anything goes,” a future that unfortunately rests upon the same outdated foundation as the concept “art.” This essay was originally published in The Proceedings of the Twentieth Century World Congress of Philosophy (1999) and reprinted in Noel Carroll, ed., Theories of Art Today (The University of Wisconsin Press, 2000). (shrink)

Arthur C. Danto, philosopher and art critic for The Nation from 1984-2009, offered interpretations of artworks by a wide array of artists, including Eva Hesse, Judy Chicago, and Cindy Sherman, whose "disturbatory" works were either ignored or denounced by mainstream critics at the time. Danto's championing of feminist art was deliberate and delightful; he openly endorsed the Guerilla Girls! His feminist art critical writings ultimately shaped the early development of what has come to be known as "feminist (...) aesthetics" particularly his focus on defiant artworks by female artists who sought to reclaim agency and expression of the female body. He revived interest in the neglected topic of beauty while simultaneously advancing radical political goals within the artworld. His call to arms urged art viewers to experience the new--what he often called "art on the edge and over"--wherein, "The experience of art becomes a moral adventure rather than merely an aesthetic interlude" (in Art on the Edge and Over: Searching for Art's Meaning in Contemporary Society 1970s-1990s, 1996). (shrink)

In this essay I consider the end-of-art thesis in its metaphysical and empirical versions. I show that both use the correspondence theory of truth as the basis for their conception of the history of art. As a counterpart to these theories I have chosen Patočka’s conception of the history of art. His theory is based also on the relationship between art and truth, but he conceives truth in the phenomenological sense of manifestation. In the rest of the essay I seek (...) to show the consequences Patočka’s conception has for the history of art. In the rst part, I set out to show Patocka’s critique of Hegel’s aesthetics as a system based on the correspondence theory of truth. In particular, I endeavour to explain his critique of some intrinsic problems of Hegel’s aesthetics, the general failure of Hegel’s system to achieve its goal, and, lastly, Hegel’s giving up on the meaning of the art in the present. I also seek to show that Danto’s version runs into the same problems and conclusions as Hegel’s. In the second part I discuss Patočka’s analysis of modern art and the aesthetic attitude, where he nds a hidden a nity between art and aletheia, which Hegel overlooked. e last part of the essay focuses on the consequences that the conception of the truth of art as aletheia have for the history of art. I conclude that art in such a conception represents an independent eld of the manifestation of being in history beside philosophy. Moreover, modern and contemporary art do not mean the end of art; rather, they have their place in art history based on aletheia, since they are more focused on the manifestation itself than on what is manifested. Unlike Hegel and Danto, therefore, Patočka retains the historical meaning of modern and contemporary art. His conception of the history of art, summed up under the idea of aletheia, has greater explanatory potential than Hegel’s and Danto’s conceptions, and it retains the historical meaning of modern and contemporary art. (shrink)

Algunas de las preguntas fundamentales de la filosofía del arte son: 1) ¿Qué es una obra de arte?, 2) ¿Qué es Arte?, 3) ¿Qué es el arte? Responderlas es determinar el sentido del arte. Este tipo de preguntas están planteadas bajo la fórmula ¿Qué es X?, es decir, preguntas en las cuales en lo simple esta lo complejo, preguntas en donde lo simple no quiere decir que sean sencillas; son preguntas que traen dentro de si su naturaleza y carácter metafísico-ontológico-gnoseológico, (...) y hasta axiológico. No es el propósito de este trabajo hacer frente o resolver estos problemas, sino proporcionar una aproximación al concepto de “obra de arte” en la época actual y como podría entenderse en relación a ciertos problemas ontológicos y epistemológicos actuales. -/- [Extended Version of: Vélez León, Paulo (2006). «Aproximaciones a la ¿obra de arte?». En Políticas al borde. Una investigación sobre el arte contemporáneo cuencano en los discursos políticos actuales, editado por Paulo Vélez León y Hernán Pacucuru. Cuenca: Universidad de Cuenca/Bienal Internacional de Cuenca, 2006, pp. 1-12]. (shrink)

I investigate the role of feminist theorizing in relation to traditionally-based aesthetics. Feminist artworks have arisen within the context of a patriarchal Artworld dominated for thousands of years by male artists, critics, theorists, and philosophers. I look at the history of that context as it impacts philosophical theorizing by pinpointing the narrow range of the paradigms used in defining “art.” I test the plausibility of Danto’s After the End of Art vision of a post-historical, pluralistic future in which (...) “anything goes,” a future that unfortunately rests upon the same outdated foundation as the concept “art.”. (shrink)

The idea of a new aestheticism is now explicit in both philosophical aesthetics and cultural theory with the publication of Gary Iseminger's The Aesthetic Function of Art and an anthology of essays edited by John Joughin and Simon Malpas critiquing the anti-aestheticism of literary theory. Both are significant in marking a wider trend reacting to, broadly speaking, intellectualised and historicised accounts of art, refocusing on the idea of appreciation itself, and working away from the emphasis on ideology and disregard for (...) the particularity of works in, especially, literary theory. This broader context also includes renewed debates running within philosophical aesthetics about non-perceptual aesthetic properties and the aesthetic experience of conceptual artworks, and about beauty in art, considerations that have engaged two philosophers normally identified by their commitment to art theoretical and historical (and by extension, non-aesthetic) accounts of artistic making and viewing, namely Noël Carroll and Arthur Danto. So Carroll acknowledges that what's at stake is an aesthetic theory of art that is potentially 'back in business', while Danto's 'surprising' theoretic re-engagement with the concept of beauty has been noted by Diarmuid Costello. (shrink)

In 2006, David Carrier (Carrier, 2006, Museum Skepticism: A History of the Display of Art in Public Galleries. Durham: Duke University Press.) coined the term ‘museum skepticism’ to describe the idea that moving artworks into museum settings strips them of essential facets of their meaning; among art historians, this is better known as ‘decontextualization’, ‘denaturing’, or ‘museumization’. Although they do not usually name it directly, many contemporary debates in the philosophy of art are informed by an inclination towards museum (...) skepticism, from work on aesthetic cognitivism (Feagin, Susan, 1995, “Paintings and their places” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 73.2: 260-8.) and contextualism (Danto, Arthur C., 1988, “Artifact and Art”, in ART/ARTIFACT: African Art in Anthropological Collections. Exhibition Catalogue. New York: Center for African Art and Prestel Verlag, 18-32.) to cultural appropriation (Eaton, A. W. and Gaskell, Ivan, 2009, “Do subaltern artifacts belong in art museums?,” The Ethics of Cultural Appropriation, ed. James O. Young and Conrad Brunk, Oxford and Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 235-67), street art (Baldini, Andrea, 2016, “Street Art: A Reply to Riggle” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 74.2: 187-91), and the value of authenticity (Korsmeyer, Carolyn, 2016, “Real Old Things” British Journal of Aesthetics, 56.3: 219-31). The very first museum skeptic, however, was Antoine Chrysostôme Quatremère de Quincy (1755-1849). (shrink)

I explore the possibility that the feminine, like art, can be thought in terms of Jean-Luc Nancy’s concept of the singular plural. In Les Muses, Nancy claims that art provides for the rethinking of a technë not ruled by instrumentality. Specifically, in rethinking aesthetics in terms of the debates laid out by Kant, Hegel and Heidegger, he resituates the ontological in terms of the specificity of the techniques of each particular artwork; each artwork establishes relations particular to its world (...) or worlds. What is at stake in the singular plural is the multiplicity of relations that are lost in the unifying gestures that arise out of radical oppositions. I rethink the singular plural through a phenomenological encounter with Barb Hunt’s artwork, Antipersonnel, a collection of hand-knitted replicas of antipersonnel landmines. (shrink)

This chapter reconstructs the neo‐Wittgensteinian proposals, and re‐examines the “family resemblances” passages from the Philosophical Investigations. Arthur Danto chooses to explain the historically contextual nature of art in some of the same terms as Wittgenstein sketches for language. The neo‐Wittgenstein view is typically reconstructed as a conjunction of two claims about the concept of art: the concept is not definable and it needs to be understood along the lines of Wittgenstein's discussion of “family resemblances.” The concept of art evolves (...) historically with different uses and conditions of application in different historical contexts. Wittgenstein briefly invokes resemblances among family members to characterize such networks of overlapping similarities and immediately proceeds to apply the idea to numbers. Danto's considered view is that the diversity of art is a matter of the historicity of both meaning and embodiment. (shrink)

Jerry Fodor wrote the following assessment of Danto’s importance in 1993: “Danto has done something I’ve been very much wanting to do: namely, reconsider some hard problems in aesthetics in the light of the past 20 years or so of philosophical work on intentionality and representation” (Fodor 1993, p. 41). Fodor is absolutely right: some of Danto’s work could be thought of as the application of some influential ideas about perception that Fodor also shared. The problem is (...) that these ideas have turned out to be false. Both Danto and Fodor are modularist: they both think that perception is an encapsulated process that is in no way influenced by any kind of non-perceptual processing (see, e.g., Fodor 1983, Pylyshyn 1984). Many of Danto’s famous and influential arguments rely very directly on this modularist assumption. There is now, however, a wealth of evidence against modularism of the strong kind held to by Danto and Fodor. We now know that perceptual experience is not determined entirely by the retinal input: our visual processing is influenced at various point in a top-down manner. What we know and what kinds of visual stimuli we have encountered previously deeply influence how the retinal input is processed. The empirical literature on this is vast and conclusive (for an overview, see Teufel and Nanay 2017 but see also the references in the last section of this paper). What does this mean for Danto’s views on art and perception? While one of Danto’s premises may turn out to be false, the history and examples he gave are valuable and bear repeating. Even more importantly, Danto’s aesthetics can in part be separated out from his modularism, leading us to draw slightly different but arguably even more interesting conclusions from famous thought experiments such as the Gallery of Indiscernibles. (shrink)

Investigation of a puzzle concerning complete yet authorless artworks.

Response to Gover (2015) on Trogdon and Livingston (2015) on artwork completion.

Arthur Danto claims that knowing that S is not a property of some individual knower M but a relation between M and some object O in the world, where O is what makes S true. For if knowledge were a property of M it would be possible to determine whether M knew simply by examining M, which is typically not the case (i.e. unless S happens to be about M). I argue that Danto errs in: (1) claiming that (...) we can determine whether or not some assertion S is true only by observing the truth conditions for S; (2) claiming that we cannot determine whether s is true by examining M; and (3) claiming that since the statement that M knows that S ‘says something about both M and the world’ it must assert a relation between M and the world. (shrink)

I sketch here an intuitive picture of repeatable artworks as created types, which are individuated in part by historical paths (re)production. Although attractive, this view has been rejected by a number of authors on the basis of general claims about abstract objects. On consideration, however, these general claims are overgeneralizations, which whilst true of some abstracta, are not true of all abstract objects, and in particular, are not true of created types. The intuitive picture of repeatable artworks as (...) created types is, then, left in place. (shrink)

With Hegel’s metaphysics attracting renewed attention, it is time to address a long-standing criticism: Scholars from Marx to Popper and Habermas have worried that Hegel’s metaphysics has anti-individualist and authoritarian implications, which are particularly pronounced in his Philosophy of History, since Hegel identifies historical progress with reason imposing itself on individuals. Rather than proposing an alternative non-metaphysical conception of reason, as Pippin or Brandom have done, this article argues that critics are broadly right in their metaphysical reading (...) of Hegel’s central concepts. However, they are mistaken about what Hegel’s approach entails, when one examines the specific types of states discussed by the philosopher in his Philosophy of History. Even on a traditional metaphysical reading, Hegel is not only non-authoritarian; he also makes a powerful argument concerning freedom, whereupon the freest society involves collective oversight and the shaping of social structures so as to ensure that they benefit everybody. (shrink)

To get a comprehensive understanding of the core concept of “the end of art”, this book analyses the intellectual trajectory of Arthur Danto, highlighting his successive achievements in philosophy of action, philosophy of history and philosophy of art. If, as Danto says, everything is extensively associated with everything else, it is impossible to avoid putting the philosophy of art in relation with his whole philosophical system. -/- .

To hold that artworks are valuable for their own sake—regardless of whatever secondary value they may have, such as entertainment, formation, education, or a pleasurable experience—is to hold that their final worth is not derived from external or secondary ends. I call this collective set of views the end-in-itself view. Nicholas Stang recently leveled a twofold charge of reductio ad absurdum and operating from a double standard against the EI view. In this article, I refute Stang by showing that (...) the charges do not obtain for at least one variation of the EI view that holds artworks to be valuable for their own sake as internally purposive ends-in-themselves. (shrink)

I propose a distinction between design intentions, activities and products, as opposed to artistic intentions, activities and artworks. Examples of design products would include a specific type of car (or any other invention or device) as well as closer relatives of art such as decorative wall designs. In order to distinguish artistic from design intentions, I present an example in which two sculptors independently work on a single object to produce two sculptures, which are distinct just because the artistic (...) intentions of the sculptors are distinct. This case is then contrasted with an attempted parallel example for design intentions, which fails to produce two correspondingly distinct design products in spite of the different design intentions of its designers. I argue that this failure occurs because designs are types, for which any single token of a given type could not simultaneously be a token of some other type of the same general kind; whereas the possibility of my sculptural 'double artwork' example shows that such artworks cannot be types. I then further investigate the concept of a design, and conclude by arguing that an extension of my sculptural example shows that literary artworks also cannot be types. (shrink)

Repeatable artworks, such as novels and musical works, have often been construed as universals whose instances are particular printings or performances. In Art and Art-Attempts, Christy Mag Uidhir offers a nominalist account of repeatable artworks, eschewing talk of universals. Mag Uidhir argues that all artworks are concrete, and artworks that we regard as repeatable are simply unified by a relevant similarity relation: we use the name Beloved to refer to two concrete printed novels because they are (...) relevantly similar to each other and to certain other printings that are the product of Toni Morrison’s art-attempt. I discuss two potential difficulties for Mag Uidhir’s notion of relevant similarity: a difficulty related to appropriation, and a difficulty related to the fact that musical performances are often the product of distinct art-attempts by the composer and by the performer. I suggest that both difficulties could be addressed by enriching the notion of relevant similarity by appeal to the artist’s specification of which similarities are essential for two works to count as relevantly similar. (shrink)

What makes a photograph an artwork, as opposed to a mere document? I defend a cluster account such that aesthetic value, aptness to interpretation, the artist’s intention and institutional uptake may contribute to the arthood of a body of photographs, with no single condition being necessary. With regard to Lawler’s works, I suggest that Lawler’s intention that they be art plays a definitive role because of the works’ resemblance to non-art photography. For some of her photographs, however, it appears that (...) such an intention is absent; and if this is correct, then, given their other features, those photographs are not artworks. (shrink)

Though Arthur Danto has long been engaged with issues of embodiment in art and beyond, neither he nor most of his interlocutors have devoted significant attention to the art form in which art and embodiment most vividly intersect, namely dance. This article, first, considers Danto’s brief references to dance in his early magnum opus, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. Second, it tracks the changes in Danto’s philosophy of art as evidenced in his later After the End of (...) Art and The Abuse of Beauty. And finally, it utilizes Danto’s most recent work on the philosophy of action to suggest a new Danto-inspired definition of art, namely "apposite bodies.". (shrink)

Many artists, art critics, and poets suggest that an aesthetic appreciation of artworks may modify our perception of the world, including quotidian things and scenes. I call this Art-to-World, AtW. Focusing on visual artworks, in this paper I articulate an empirically-informed account of AtW that is based on content-related views of aesthetic experience, and on Goodman’s and Elgin’s concept of exemplification. An aesthetic encounter with artworks demands paying attention to its aesthetic, expressive, or design properties that realize (...) its purpose. Attention to these properties make percipients better able to spot them in other entities and scenes as well. The upshot is that an aesthetic commerce with artworks enlarges the scope of what we are able to see and has therefore momentous epistemic consequences. (shrink)

Picking up on Marx’s and Hegel’s analyses of human beings as social and individual, the article shows that what is at stake is not merely the possibility of individuality, but also the correct conception of the universal good. Both Marx and Hegel suppose that individuals must be social or political as individuals, which means, at least in Hegel’s case, that particular interests must form part of the universal good. The good and the rational is not something that (...) requires sacrificing one’s interests for the community or denying one’s particular character so as to become an equal rational agent. Very much to the contrary, the rational or the common good is nothing but the harmonious structuring of particular interests. While Section I introduces Marx’s and Hegel’s conceptions of individual and social beings, Sections II and III discuss their respective views of individuality, and Sections IV and V discuss the notion of a universal good containing individual interests. (shrink)

While Hegel's metaphysics was long reviled, it has garnered more interest in recent years, with even the so-called non-metaphysical Hegelians starting to explicitly discuss Hegel’s metaphysical commitments. This brings up the old question: what are the social-philosophical implications of Hegel’s metaphysics? This chapter provides a unique answer to this question by contrasting the former non-metaphysical reading (as developed by Robert Pippin) with a traditional way of interpreting Hegel’s metaphysics and social philosophy, whose lineage includes not Wittgenstein, (...) Sellars, or Brandom, but rather Schelling, Marx, and Adorno. After discussing the two varieties of metaphysics (Sections 1–3), I will argue that a traditional metaphysical Hegel is more realist when it comes to assessing the power of social structures (Section 4), focused on structural freedom rather than agency (Sections 5 and 6), and more empowering for and lenient towards individuals who can make their interests count and are free to be irrational and egoist (Section 7). (shrink)

Many artists, art critics, and poets suggest that an aesthetic appreciation of artworks may modify our perception of the world, including quotidian things and scenes. I call this Art-to-World, AtW. Focusing on visual artworks, in this paper I articulate an empirically-informed account of AtW that is based on content related views of aesthetic experience, and on Goodman’s and Elgin’s concept of exemplification. An aesthetic encounter with artworks demands paying attention to its aesthetic, expressive, or design properties that (...) realize its purpose. Attention to these properties make percipients better able to spot them in other entities and scenes as well. The upshot is that an aesthetic commerce with artworks enlarges the scope of what we are able to see and has therefore momentous epistemic consequences. (shrink)

The purpose of the present essay is to explicate the basic movement which the Understanding exercises upon itself at the end of the chapter on “Force and the Understanding” in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Unlike many other commentators on the Phenomenology, I hope to show how Hegel’s argumentation in this chapter applies not merely to the Newtonian paradigm (to which Hegel makes explicit reference), but to any paradigm which involves the objectivistic presuppositions of the Understanding.

The core argument of this article is that Adorno adopts the distinction between an abstract and a concrete universal from Hegel and criticizes Hegel, on that basis, as abstract. The first two parts of the article outline that both thinkers take the abstract universal to be the form of a false type of knowledge and society, and the concrete universal to be a positive aim. However, as the third part argues, Adorno rejects how the concrete universal is understood (...) in Hegel’s philosophy and formulates a different conception of it. The fourth part questions if Adorno manages to overcome the problems he identifies in Hegel or whether they are inherent to the programme of dialectics both endorse. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s views regarding suicide are usually interpreted as a response to Christian, Kantian, and Schopenhauerian ethics. Here, they are defended on the basis of his notion of life as an aesthetic phenomenon in order to provide extramoral responses to such challenges as the following: a) whether the self can deliver the right kind of judgment regarding her life, b) how suicide can be considered an empowerment of the will, and c) whether suicide can be considered an exercise of freedom by (...) the subject who thereby cancels the very grounds and means for will and action. Reconstructed as a response to Hegel’s argument against suicide on the grounds that one is not the master of oneself and that one therefore lacks the proper means to judge one’s life, Nietzsche’s position provides the epistemic footing to ground an alternate notion of self-mastery as well as the necessary insight regarding one’s life. It is shown that this reading of Nietzsche’s argument is in alignment with his non-dualism and expressivist views regarding agency. Finally, a response is formulated to the socially-grounded arguments prohibiting suicide on the basis of this reading of Nietzsche’s position. (shrink)

This essay examines the difficulties faced by the claim that artworks are simple physical objects (or, in the case of non-visual art forms, simple structures of another sort) and examines alternative proposals regarding their ontological nature.

Both Hegel and the later Wittgenstein were concerned with the problem of how to begin speculation, or the problem of beginning. I argue that despite many differences, there are surprising similarities between their thinking about the beginning. They both consider different kinds of beginnings and combine them into complex analogies. The beginning has a subjective and an objective moment. The philosophizing subject has to begin with something, with an object. For Hegel, the objective moment is pure being. For (...) Wittgenstein, the objective moment is something that cannot be doubted. As regards the subjective moment, the philosophizing subject has to decide, without any reason, to conclude her quest for the presuppositionless beginning and finally begin at the beginning. The arational moment of this decision is echoed throughout any rational thought. Any application of a (rational) rule is, ultimately, a blind decision to apply this rule. (shrink)

Some of our aesthetic experiences are of artworks. Some others are of everyday scenes. The question I examine in this paper is about the relation between these two different kinds of aesthetic experience. I argue that the experience of artworks can dispose us to experience everyday scenes in an aesthetic manner both short-term and long-term. Finally, I examine what constraints this phenomenon puts on different accounts of aesthetic experience.

Este artículo pretende señalar aquellos puntos de la Fenomenología del espíritu en los que Hegel transforma el concepto moderno de identidad y lo abre al tiempo, al proceso y al desarrollo, dando paso a la identificación como nuevo fundamento del fenómeno identitario. Se ha señalado muchas veces que, por el hecho mencionado, Hegel está en la base de Freud, pero pocas veces se ha hecho una lectura cercana de ciertos pasajes y términos de la Fenomenología como formulaciones del (...) fenómeno de la identificación. La identificación aparece así, entre otras cosas, como un dejar atrás el sujeto protegido de la modernidad y un tomar la diferencia, la otridad, como el único camino para que el sí-mismo avance. (shrink)