The article focuses on the theme of the “End of Art” in the philosophy of Arthur C. Danto, a concept he developed in his writing in the mid-1980s. Departing from the historical framework developed since Analytical Philosophy of History (1965) and adopting an interpretive Hegelian approach to the construction of history, Danto’s thought grapples with several contradictions. These contradictions encompass the notion of the “End of Art”, ultimately leading to a reduction of art to an idealized level. Consequently, this highlights (...) the irreconcilability between Essentialism and Historicism, furthering the philosophical disenfranchisement of art. (shrink)

1 Essenzialismo senza giudizi critici di valore Arthur Danto si è opposto all’accusa secondo la quale la propria filosofia dell’arte, seppure essenzialista, altro non sarebbe se non una critica d’arte venduta come filosofia, come del resto è stato detto a proposito di molte teorie dell’arte del passato. Danto si riferisce alla famosa obiezione di Morris Weitz nei confronti delle maggiori teorie dell’arte della tradizione europea, secondo la quale quelle che erano proposte come definizioni del...

In The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (1981) Arthur Danto propone la nozione di «stile individuale» identificando quest’uldma con qualcosa di dato che appartiene all’artista in maniera essenziale e inseparabile. In contrasto con questa idea, la sua teoria della fine dell’arte, presentata in After the End of Art (1997) e altrove, suggerisce la liberazione degli artisti da qualsiasi impegno stilistico. Come si accordano queste due teorie? Possono esserci stili individuali dopo la fine dell’...

This article compares two philosophers who have a different theoretical origin: respectively, Arthur C. Danto and Jean-François Lyotard. Both of them are interested in the revolutionary character of Andy Warhol’s art. Danto as well as Lyotard argues that Warhol conceives the work of art as a machine: according to the former, it is a philosophical machine; according to the latter, it is a consumerist machine. Nonetheless, the two hypotheses converge on judging Warhol’s art as a turn in the history of (...) art and its relationship to the world. According to Danto, who follows Hegel here, Warhol at the same time interprets and transcends the 1960s and their Zeitgeist. But paradoxically, Warhol’s historical gesture, epitomized by his work Brillo Box, initiates the age of the “end of art”. According to Lyotard, on the contrary, Warhol represents the end of the critical power of modern art, to which the sublime alone can remediate. The two perspectives converge in the idea that the investigation of repetition is the very center of Warhol’s art. Art has now become the pivot of the Western capitalism and consumerist society. Warhol actually explores the different forms and modes of repetition (commodities, icons, symbols) and, in this way, anticipates the confrontation of contemporary art with the “finite infinite” represented by the media world. (shrink)

Danto’s philosophy of history of art has undergone several transformations. It is possible to distinguish three “phases”: in the first, history is considered an a posteriori construction (see Analytical Philosophy of History). In the second phase, history becomes an internal development within art itself. In this case, with the end of history, art dissolves into its own philosophy (see The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art). In the third phase, history is still an internal development, but now, with the end of history, (...) art and philosophy become independent of each other (see After the End of Art). This essay focuses on two issues: first, on the difficulties of an art history after the end of the history of art; secondly, for what reasons Danto claims that the history of art is ended. Danto has explained the “political” reasons for this choice, namely the attempt to free art from the repressive and disenfranchising moves of philosophy. This essay aims to outline the epistemic reasons: the history of art “must” end, because only on this condition is an essentialist definition of art really possible. (shrink)

While Hegel’s influence on Arthur Danto has been examined in relation to specific parts of his thought, an overall analysis of said influence is still wanting. In this article, I analyze the presence of Hegelian influence in Danto’s complete thought from three perspectives: (1) Danto’s acceptance of Hegelian assumptions when it comes to the conception of history, narrative realism and historical progress, which allows him to combine timeless essentialism with historicism, (2) the cognitive aspect of art and the conception of (...) art as an embodied symbol, as well as the historical quality of said embodiment, and (3) the assumption that art’s trajectory coincides with the Hegelian prophecy that art will give way to philosophy, on which Danto’s “end of art” thesis is based. This examination not only illuminates the interrelation between the different parts of Dantian philosophy, but also reveals its systematic character. (shrink)

The main aim of the present essay is to explore Arthur C. Danto’s passionate confrontation with German philosophy. As will emerge, it is neither an analysis planned according to a precise chronological order, nor a rigidly systematic investigation. In a succession of irreverent betrayals, syncretistic appropriations and courageous afterthoughts, Danto will proceed rather backwards, going from Nietzsche to Hegel and from Hegel to Kant. In doing so – during his long and tireless philosophical r...

1 Il primo inganno Tu non nascesti per la morte, immortale Uccello!le affannate generazioni non ti calpestano;la voce ch’io odo in questa fuggevole notte fu uditain antichi giorni dall’imperatore e dal villano. Questi versi dall’ Ode a un usignolo di John Keats, del 1819, ripropongono la domanda retorica che già Kant aveva posto nel 1790: «Che cosa c’è di più celebrato dai poeti dell’affascinante bel canto dell’usignolo, in cespugli solitari, in una calma sera d’estate, sotto la dolce luce de...

1. A partire dagli anni Ottanta, Arthur Danto ha raccolto una meravigliosa concatenazione di rompicapi tra loro collegati sulla natura dell’opera d’arte e sulla storia di movimenti artistici - che coinvolgono principalmente la pittura - appartenenti ad anni relativamente recenti. Tali rompicapi possono senza dubbio venire annoverati tra gli argomenti più dibattuti in estetica analitica nel periodo, lungo più di vent’anni, tra l’uscita de La destituzione filosofica dell’arte (1986) e il presen...

Think Rich. Look Poor.Andy Warhol 1 Quadro introduttivo: la vita e l’opera di Danto Arthur C. Danto inizia la sua biografia intellettuale My Life as a Philosopher, a tutt’oggi inedita, con l’affermazione: «ho avuto l’immensa fortuna di crescere nel mezzo di due epoche d’oro — quella della filosofia e quella dell’arte». Sarà questa costellazione [Konstellation; N. d. T.] a modellare i suoi interessi, il suo sviluppo filosofico e in particolare la sua filosofia dell’arte che è stata influenzata...

Over a decade ago, Arthur Danto announced that art ended in the sixties. Ever since this declaration, he has been at the forefront of a radical critique of the nature of art in our time. After the End of Art presents Danto's first full-scale reformulation of his original insight, showing how, with the eclipse of abstract expressionism, art has deviated irrevocably from the narrative course that Vasari helped define for it in the Renaissance. Moreover, he leads the way to a (...) new type of criticism that can help us understand art in a posthistorical age where, for example, an artist can produce a work in the style of Rembrandt to create a visual pun, and where traditional theories cannot explain the difference between Andy Warhol's Brillo Box and the product found in the grocery store. Here we are engaged in a series of insightful and entertaining conversations on the most relevant aesthetic and philosophical issues of art, conducted by an especially acute observer of the art scene today.Originally delivered as the prestigious Mellon Lectures on the Fine Arts, these writings cover art history, pop art, "people's art," the future role of museums, and the critical contributions of Clement Greenberg--who helped make sense of modernism for viewers over two generations ago through an aesthetics-based criticism. Tracing art history from a mimetic tradition through the modern era of manifestos, Danto shows that it wasn't until the invention of Pop art that the historical understanding of the means and ends of art was nullified. Even modernist art, which tried to break with the past by questioning the ways of producing art, hinged on a narrative.Traditional notions of aesthetics can no longer apply to contemporary art, argues Danto. Instead he focuses on a philosophy of art criticism that can deal with perhaps the most perplexing feature of contemporary art: that everything is possible. (shrink)

Danto’s interpretation about Plato’s original condemnation of art doesn’t ground in a rigorous and accurate exegesis of the Platonic text. This contributed to making the interpreters doubtful (e.g. Halliwell), since Danto seems to conceive the philosophical genesis of mimesis attributing to it an excessively univocal meaning as compared to Platonic theses. However, interesting topics about the dangers of poetry and the moral and political implications of the “philosophical disenfranchisement of art” arise from the few Danto’s mentions about Plato’s psychological arguments (...) on mimetic art. The article focuses on these psychological aspects suggesting to Danto the ethical reason why art, tragedy in particular, is considered by Plato to be “dangerous”. The analysis will point out that, with regard to a philosophical consideration of the mimesis, dramatic poetry (specifically, Greek theatre) is a perspicuous clue to clarify the control function exerted by art over the sphere of emotions. This will also allow us to recognize Danto’s debt to Nietzsche, with whom he shares the intention to overthrow Platonism. (shrink)

Through a comparison between Arthur Danto’s philosophy of art and Kantian aesthetic reflection, this article identifies the place from which Danto can underestimate the aesthetic experience and its alleged irrelevance in relation to art. I argue, first, that this position of Danto is crossed by some internal contradictions in his thought. Furthermore, based on the comparison with Kant, I examine the thesis of the “end of the history of art” advanced by Danto, considering in particular two aspects. I argue: (a) (...) that Danto surreptitiously or parasitically uses in his critical activity a notion of aesthetic experience which his philosophical argument, and in particular his “aesthetic of meanings”, cannot legitimize; (b) that his thesis relating to the end of art history is symptomatic of a wider problem, which involves our forms of life, and which finds a particularly significant statement in Friedrich von Hayek’s neoliberal thought. The attempt at a neoliberal anthropology of homo œconomicus implies the tendency to absorb within it the very meaning of the experience that has long been at the center of aesthetic and artistic experience. This totalizing colonization of human forms of life appropriates some exemplary characteristics of aesthetic and artistic experience, perverting them, starting with the presumed generation of spontaneous orders, which we know are framed in an ideological horizon that is anything but obvious or natural. My thesis is that Danto’s idea of a post-historical art is one of the symptoms of this condition. (shrink)

Arthur Danto asserts that Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington embodies the rhetoric paradigm of internal beauty’s meaning. However, the relationship to the Kant’s pulchritudo adhaerens is not an easy one: Danto’s recalls against the self-referent formalism of Greenberg’s Modernism and his tacit issues about the environmental non-monumentality of Richard Serra’s Minimalism, are, most importantly, haunted by the unquestioned spectral logic of the image embodiment. The beholders’ reflecting shape on the funeral Wall is, finally, both a pathetic index and (...) a medial incarnation–e.g. a Verkörperung–of the underworld. (shrink)

Video barbam et pallium, philosophum nondum videoAulo Gellio, Noctes Atticae, IX, 2, 4 1 Lo scenario Immaginiamo che il direttore di un grande museo venga a sapere che uno dei più grandi e riconosciuti maestri dell’arte contemporanea - anch’egli immaginario, chiamiamolo per comodità D’Auchan — ha lasciato in eredità a qualcuno, diciamo un oscuro collezionista, una grande quantità di opere del tutto inedite e completamente ignote anche alla critica, che il fortunato beneficiario ha deciso infi...

In questo saggio pongo l’accento su un punto che penso sia sottovalutato dall’ontologia dell’arte di Danto — soprattutto nella sua rapida trattazione della teoria estetica — malgrado sia persuasiva sotto altri aspetti. Il punto che cerco di difendere è in fin dei conti modesto: cercherò di sostenere che Danto non è sufficientemente attento al modo in cui la materialità di un’opera d’arte influenza i problemi che concernono l’intenzione dell’artista e l’interpretazione dell’osservatore. E cioè...

L’estetica classica - quella di Kant, e di Greenberg che considera la bellezza come un misto di piacere, disinteresse, contemplazione e universalità - ha scarsa applicazione nell’ambito dell’arte contemporanea. Questo non vuol dire non vi trovi applicazione l’estetica intesa in un senso più ampio. Qualità come la tetraggine, la rozzezza, la lucentezza ecc. si collocano all’interno dell’ampio raggio delle qualità estetiche che nel contesto contemporaneo hanno rilevanza, così come molte altre q...

tutti quelli che vedono e dipingono cieli verdie prati azzurri dovrebbero essere sterilizzatiAdolf Hitler in misura considerevole, le nostre praticheche riguardano le opere [delle arti] visiveconsistono - e normalmente, lungo la storiae la tradizione dell’arte occidentale [...], sonoconsistite — precisamente nel non trattare taliopere come oggetti fisiciFrank Sibley Si parla tanto di arte. Dell’esistenza di una cosa del genere, di qualcosa che ricomprende in sé tutte quelle che sono le varie...

Columbia. Il 18 ottobre 2006 entro alla Galleria Marlborough di New York, è l’inaugurazione della mostra di Fernando Botero su Abu Ghraib. Visito la mostra insieme a un amico, il pittore Valerio Adami, e sua moglie Camilla, pittrice anche lei. Valerio mi parla del modo in cui Botero disegna le mani e gli animali, e poi me lo presenta. Mentre giro per la galleria, mi imbatto in Arthur C. Danto con la moglie. Danto è professore emerito di filosofia dell’arte alla (...) Columbia University, e recensir... (shrink)

Nel tentativo di superare l’alessandrinismo, una parte della cultura borghese occidentale ha prodotto qualcosa di mai visto prima d’ora: la cultura dell’avanguardia. Essa è stata resa possibile da una superiore consapevolezza della storia, e più precisamente dalla comparsa di un nuovo genere di critica della società, la critica storica. Clement Greenberg, Avant Garde and Kitsch Le avanguardie appartengono al passato. Con il rischio di un paradosso che vorrei annotare all’inizio di queste rifl...

In the field of research of theory of history, Danto is mostly known as the author of Analytical Philosophy of History (1965), that is as the author of one of the key texts of the so-called Narrative Turn. But this work loses many of its own shades of meaning, if isolated from the rest of Danto’s production. The philosophy of history articulated in the work of 1965 is only the first piece of an atypical philosophical system, within which each of (...) the parts communicates with the others. Based on this awareness, the present work aims to reconstruct, in essential lines, Danto’s theory of history, paying particular attention to the links it maintains with the rest of the system. In addition, while complying with this goal, it will also be useful to highlight the main influences of the continental tradition that resonate in his metahistorical synthesis. In this way, hopefully, we will show the importance of two of the least exercised interpretative gestures on this portion of the American philosopher work, that we think are fundamental, if you want to understand its authentic meaning. (shrink)

Ogni volta che leggo uno scritto di Danto resto colpito dalla cultura, dai piaceri dell’intelligenza e dai sentimenti che vi circolano. Ogni volta imparo qualcosa di vitale, nel senso di qualcosa che fa venire in mente altre idee. Danto è incapace di annoiare. Ha una mente pirotecnica e avventurosa, e una scrittura inconfondibile. Forse, proprio per questo tradurre il suo libro, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, non è stato facile: si è trattato, sì, di tradurre un libro di filosofia, a...

Definire l’arte? Danto è un filosofo pirotecnico, acuto e colto, e da quasi trent’anni è anche l’influente critico d’arte del settimanale radical newyorkese «The Nation». Per quanto Danto lamenti una certa disattenzione nei suoi confronti da parte dei critici e degli storici dell’arte, è invece persuaso — a ragione, anche se forse limitatamente al mondo anglo-americano — che il suo famoso articolo del 1964, The Artworld, — poi sostanzialmente rielaborato in forme diverse — «really did become...

Art theory has consistently emphasised the importance of situational, cultural, institutional and historical factors in viewers’ experience of fine art. However, the link between this heavily context-dependent interpretation and the workings of the mind is often left unexamined. Drawing on relevance theory—a prominent, cogent and productive body of work in cognitive pragmatics—we here argue that fine art achieves its effects by prompting the use of cognitive processes that are more commonly employed in the interpretation of words and other (...) stimuli presented in a communicative context. We describe in particular how institutional factors effectively co-opt these processes for new ends, allowing viewers to achieve cognitive effects that they otherwise would not, and so provide cognitivist backing for an Institutional Theory of Art, such as that put forward by Arthur Danto. More generally, we situate and describe the Western fine art tradition as a phenomenon that is a consequence of both the cognitive processes involved in communication, and of cultural norms, practices and institutions. (shrink)

1 Arte d’avanguardia e teorie estetiche dell’arte L’arte d’avanguardia ha una particolare rilevanza per la filosofia dell’arte? Naturalmente una parte dell’arte d’avanguardia può essere intrinsecamente interessante. Forse i filosofi possono riflettere sul significato e il valore di queste opere; alcune possono addirittura sollevare delle questioni filosofiche; tuttavia, molti filosofi, sulla scorta di Arthur Danto, hanno ritenuto che da esse si possano trarre degli insegnamenti di portata piu...

Arthur C. Danto’s The Transfiguration of the Commonplace is one of the most influential recent books on philosophy of art. It is noteworthy for both his method, which emphasizes indiscernible pairs and sets of objects, and his conclusion, which is that artworks are distinguished from non-artwork counterparts by a semantic and aesthetic transfiguration that depends on their relationship to art history. In numerous contexts, Danto has confirmed that the relevant concept of art is the concept of fine art. Examples (...) of music that are not fine art demonstrate that semantic and aesthetic transfiguration does not require a relationship to art history or art theory. Appropriate interpretation and individuation of a great deal of music can be achieved by listeners who do not grasp art theory and who do not guide their interpretation by reference to the concept of art. (shrink)

Dans ce travail, nous tentons de démontrer que l’interrogation merleau-pontienne sur l’art s’ordonne selon trois mouvements spéculatifs distincts et successifs. Dans les années quarante, l’élaboration d’une phénoménologie de la perception conduit Merleau-Ponty à aborder l’art à partir de l’oeuvre d’art et du sujet percevant qui la reçoit, c’est-à-dire du spectateur. Au début des années cinquante, cette phénoménologie de l’oeuvre d’art et de la perception esthétique fait place à une philosophie de l’expression. Le point de départ du questionnement artistique change : (...) il est, non plus le sens exprimé, mais l’acte expressif ou créateur. La signification de l’oeuvre d’art se voit dès lors ressaisie à partir du sens d’être de l’artiste : l’oeuvre est une réponse aux manques perceptifs de l’artiste. À la fin des années cinquante, le cheminement merleau-pontien connaît un tournant ontologique. Merleau-Ponty en vient à régresser en-deçà de l’artiste, vers l’Être même, lequel s’impose finalement comme le créateur véritable. La dernière philosophie de l’art merleau-pontienne prend dès lors les allures d’une traditionnelle philosophie de l’inspiration.In this work, we undertake to demonstrate that the merleau-pontian inquiry into art orders itself according to three distinct and successive speculative movements. In the 1940s, the elaboration of a phenomenology of perception led Merleau-Ponty to approach art starting from the work of art and the perceiving subject who receives it, the spectator. From the beginning of the 1950s, this phenomenology of the work of art and aesthetic perception gave way to a philosophy of expression. The point of departure for artistic questioning changes: it is no longer the meaning expressed, but the expressive or creative act. The signification of the work of art sees itself from this moment understood starting from the meaning of being for the artist: the work is a response to perceptive omissions of the artist. At the end of the 1950s, the merleau-pontian progress of thought experiences an ontological turning. Merleau-Ponty wants to regress below the artist, toward Being itself, which imposes itself finally as the true creator. The last merleau-pontian philosophy of art takes from this moment the aspects of a traditional philosophy of inspiration.In questo lavoro cerchiamo di mostrare come l’interrogazione merleau-pontiana attorno all’arte si dispieghi secondo tre movimenti speculativi distinti e successivi. Negli anni Quaranta l’elaborazione di una fenomenologia della percezione porta Merleau-Ponty a esaminare l’arte a partire dall’opera e dal soggetto percipiente che la fruisce, ossia dallo spettatore. All’inizio degli anni Cinquanta, tale fenomenologia dell’opera d’arte e della percezione estetica cede il passo a una filosofia dell’espressione. Il punto di partenza dell’interrogazione artistica cambia: non è più il senso espresso, ma l’atto espressivo o creativo. Il significato dell’opera d’arte è quindi ricompreso a partire dal senso d’essere dell’artista: l’opera è una risposta alle lacune percettive dell’artista. Alla fine degli anni Cinquanta assistiamo a una svolta ontologica nell’itinerario merleau-pontiano. La ricerca di Merleau-Ponty ci conduce al di qua dell’artista, verso l’Essere stesso, che s’impone infine come l’autentico creatore. L’ultima filosofia dell’arte merleau-pontiana assume i contorni di una tradizionale filosofia dell’ispirazione. (shrink)

Gianni Vattimo ha elaborato l’estetica e la teoria dell’arte del «pensiero debole» soprattutto in alcuni articoli pubblicati nella «Rivista di Estetica» (della quale è stato direttore). Parte di questi saggi è stata poi raccolta nella seconda sezione di una delle sue opere centrali, La fine della modernità, sezione intitolata, significativamente, La verità dell’arte. Le diverse questioni discusse da Vattimo sono infatti attraversate dal filo conduttore del problema della verità dell’arte, nell’epoca del nichilismo, della fine della storia e del (...) mondo estetizzato dei mass media. Attraverso una lettura teoreticamente produttiva di M. Heidegger e F. Nietzsche, ma anche – come si vedrà – di certe pagine kantiane, e al contempo “indebolendo” l’ermeneutica di H.-G. Gadamer (ma anche quella di L. Pareyson),Vattimo affronta la questione dell’arte, della sua verità, del suo significato, del suo statuto ontologico, mettendo anzitutto in questione la domanda “che cos’è l’arte?” che molti studiosi, sia in ambito “analitico”, sia in ambito “continentale”, pongono al centro della riflessione estetica. Ha infatti senso, oggi, chiedersi «che cos’è l’arte?», cercando di fornire una definizione che restituisca l’ontos on, l’essenza dell’arte? O è proprio il fatto di presumere la possibilità di offrire una definizione a costituire il vero problema, in quanto tale assunzione presuppone già un determinato modo di pensare il mondo, modo di pensare che, storicamente, si è costituito come la metafisica occidentale? E se nel post-moderno la metafisica occidentale viene decostruita da un pensiero e da prassi vitali che ne mettono in crisi le griglie concettuali, ne sovvertono gli ordini e le tassonomie, esibendone così l’infondatezza, com’è possibile definire, pensare e praticare l’arte e l’estetica, che sono categorie impiantate solidamente nelle strutture della metafisica? (shrink)

Does strolling through an art museum, admiring the old masters, improve us morally and spiritually? Would government subsidies of "high art" (such as big-city opera houses) be better spent on local community art projects? In What Good are the Arts? John Carey--one of Britain's most respected literary critics--offers a delightfully skeptical look at the nature of art. In particular, he cuts through the cant surrounding the fine arts, debunking claims that the arts make us better people or that judgements (...) about art are anything more than personal opinion. Indeed, Carey argues that there are no absolute values in the arts and that we cannot call other people's aesthetic choices "mistaken" or "incorrect," however much we dislike them. Along the way, Carey reveals the flaws in the aesthetic theories of everyone from Emanuel Kant to Arthur C. Danto, and he skewers the claims of "high-art advocates" such as Jeannette Winterson. But Carey does argue strongly for the value of art as an activity and for the superiority of one art in particular: literature. Literature, he contends, is the only art capable of reasoning, and the only art that can criticize. Language is the medium that we use to convey ideas, and the usual ingredients of other arts--objects, noises, light effects--cannot replicate this function. Literature has the ability to inspire the mind and the heart towards practical ends far better than any work of conceptual art. Here then is a lively and stimulating invitation to debate the value of art, a provocative book that will pique the interest of anyone who loves painting, music, or literature. (shrink)

Prendendo le mosse dall’esame del ciclo pianistico Quatre études de rythme, di Olivier Messiaen , scritto fra il 1949 e il 1950, l’articolo delinea un sintetico confronto fra due differenti espressioni dell’arte musicale. Da un lato una composizione della metà del Novecento: repertorio profano, strumentale, frutto di concezioni individuali, testimonianza della fase post-tonale del pensiero musicale. Dall’altro la monodia gregoriana: repertorio sacro, vocale, anonimo, che esprime concetti formali pre-tonali. Occasione di tale raffronto è l’indagine sulla portata concettuale e tecnica di (...) termini chiave come “modo” e “neuma”, che Messiaen mutua dalla teoria musicale medioevale facendone oggetto di riflessione teorica e principio di concezioni tecniche. L’articolo tenta di sondare la complessa trama di rapporti mediante la quale due espressioni artistiche apparentemente agli antipodi entrano in contatto e si illuminano a vicenda. Expanding on the study of the piano cycle Quatre Études de Rythme by Olivier Messiaen , composed in 1949–1950, this article provides a brief comparison between two different expressions of art music. On the one hand we have a composition dating back to the mid-1900s: profane instrumental music, the result of individual conceptions, bearing witness to the post-tonal development in musical thought. On the other, Gregorian monody: sacred vocal music, anonymous, expressing formal pre-tonal concepts. This comparison is developed by looking at the conceptual and technical meaning of key terms, such as “mode” and “neume”, which Messiaen turned from Mediaeval musical theory into subjects for theoretical reflection and a principle of technical conceptions. The article sets out to discuss their complex inter-relationships whereby these two artistic, seemingly opposing, expressions converge and are thus reciprocally enhanced. (shrink)

The current form and transformation of artistic practice in the 20th and 21st century caused some estrangement of the recipient and the art. The current discourse is therefore dominated by some distrust in defining the criteria of contemporary art, or even the dilemma of whether or not art has to be defined at all, mostly under the influence of Morris Weitz. Arthur Danto very aptly reminds that there is currently no way to distinguish art from objects that are not art, (...) even though many theorists have tried to come up with a solution. The need to distinguish different objects in order to carry out the theoretical examination or to have a functional defining apparatus for criticism, or the exhibition practice is not necessary only on the semantic level. The aim of the submitted paper is therefore to offer a brief cross-section of theories, which, over the past sixty years, dealt with the problem of the definition of art and appreciate/re-think the need for a functional definition of art as the determinant of adequate aesthetic theory. (shrink)

The current form and transformation of artistic practice in the 20th and 21st century caused some estrangement of the recipient and the art. The current discourse is therefore dominated by some distrust in defining the criteria of contemporary art, or even the dilemma of whether or not art has to be defined at all, mostly under the influence of Morris Weitz. Arthur Danto very aptly reminds that there is currently no way to distinguish art from objects that are not art, (...) even though many theorists have tried to come up with a solution. The need to distinguish different objects in order to carry out the theoretical examination or to have a functional defining apparatus for criticism, or the exhibition practice is not necessary only on the semantic level. The aim of the submitted paper is therefore to offer a brief cross-section of theories, which, over the past sixty years, dealt with the problem of the definition of art and appreciate/re-think the need for a functional definition of art as the determinant of adequate aesthetic theory. (shrink)

The current form and transformation of artistic practice in the 20th and 21st century caused some estrangement of the recipient and the art. The current discourse is therefore dominated by some distrust in defining the criteria of contemporary art, or even the dilemma of whether or not art has to be defined at all, mostly under the influence of Morris Weitz. Arthur Danto very aptly reminds that there is currently no way to distinguish art from objects that are not art, (...) even though many theorists have tried to come up with a solution. The need to distinguish different objects in order to carry out the theoretical examination or to have a functional defining apparatus for criticism, or the exhibition practice is not necessary only on the semantic level. The aim of the submitted paper is therefore to offer a brief cross-section of theories, which, over the past sixty years, dealt with the problem of the definition of art and appreciate/re-think the need for a functional definition of art as the determinant of adequate aesthetic theory. (shrink)

The Spanish philosopher Gustavo Bueno coined the expression “substantive arts” to refer to those arts that do not serve any immediate, mundane or practical purpose. In this paper, I briefly present this idea and put forward a definition of the substantive arts as an alternative to those used until now. Starting from the assumption that since the end of the 18th century there has been a set of arts that have their own substantivity, I expound on certain criteria widely used (...) as distinctive features to define the substantive arts. I subsequently put forward an alternative intensional criterion to characterize the substantive arts. To end, I draw some corollaries following from the application of this criterion. (shrink)

Bioethics, neuroscience, medicine are contributing to a debate on the definition and criteria of death. This topic is very controversial, and it demonstrates clashing views on the meaning of human life and death. Official medical and legal positions agree upon a biological definition of death as irreversible cessation of integrated functioning of the organism as a whole, and whole-brain criterion to ascertain death. These positions have to face many criticisms: some scholars speak of logical and practical inconsistency, some others of (...) invalid scientific theory about the supreme integrator. In this paper some criticisms are exposed and discussed in order to reconstruct the state of the art in bioethical debate. -/- . (shrink)

The chief purpose of Peter Kivy’s latest book, which is written in his familiar civilised, leisurely manner, is to recommend to philosophers of art the pursuit of differences—the looking for differences—amongst the fine arts. This recommendation is not advanced in virtue of scepticism about the possibility of a unitary theory of the various art forms or conviction of the impossibility of a definition of the concept of fine art or a denial that the achievement of such a definition (...) would be of any real importance. Rather, Kivy argues that the pursuit of sameness across the arts has led time and time again to a misrepresentation of the nature of one or more of the arts through their assimilation to a supposed paradigmatic art form or the imposition on them of a favoured conception of the essence of art. Accordingly, the first chapter of the book sketches the history of aesthetic theory from the eighteenth to the first part of the twentieth century and represents it as dominated by the attempt to fit the recalcitrant art of absolute music into what was taken to be the essential nature of art or to replace this conception by one appropriate to music, neither attempt being successful. And the second chapter brings us up to the present through a critical examination of the Wittgensteinian repudiation of the traditional task of defining art—very familiar territory—and Arthur Danto’s continuation of the traditional task but with a radical change in the idea of the kind of property that binds the arts together. Kivy’s claim is not just that the pursuit of sameness has had deleterious effects in the past but that at the present time the task of defining the idea of a work of art still dominates discussion and “discourage[s] philosophers from the equally interesting task of studying the arts in their particularity”. The remaining five chapters of his book are case studies intended to act as an antidote to the obsession with the pursuit of sameness. (shrink)

: According to the extended mind thesis, the human mind is not limited by the boundaries of the body. In this paper, we propose a description of human emotions based on two distinct theories, not usually considered together: Vygotsky’s historical-cultural psychology and Chomsky’s theory of language. Together these two perspectives allow us to construct a global theory of extended mind that considers emotions to be artificial entities that have a specific “biological” goal and are external to the body. In the (...) last short section, this model will be applied to the case of “artistic” human affect. Keywords Extended Mind; Language; Lev S. Vygotsky; Noam Chomsky; Human Emotions; Aesthetic Reaction Fuori dal corpo. Linguaggio, emozioni e arte nei diari di Vygotsky Riassunto: Secondo la tesi della mente estesa, la mente umana non è confinata entro i limiti del corpo. In questo lavoro, proponiamo una descrizione delle emozioni umane basata su due diverse teorie, che solitamente non vengono considerate assieme: la psicologia storico-culturale di Vygotsky e la teoria del linguaggio di Chomsky. Prese assieme queste due prospettive ci permettono di costruire una teoria globale della mente estesa che consideri le emozioni come entità artificiali che hanno uno specifico fine “biologico” e che tuttavia sono “esterne” rispetto al corpo. Nell’ultima breve sezione, questo modello sarà applicato al caso del peculiare affetto “artistico” umano. Parole chiave: Mente estesa; Linguaggio; Vygotsky; Chomsky; Emozioni umane; Reazioni estetiche. (shrink)

The last century was marked by a characteristic that has accompanied many human activities. In philosophy, attempts have been made to convince professionals, students and the more educated population that truth is unattainable, or does not even exist, or is only a reflection of thought. In the field of politics, ethics and morals, the new means of communication of the first half of the 20th century, first and foremost the radio followed by the press, and the powerful who controlled them, (...) they succeeded in the unprecedented feat of making very large sections of the population believe that the exponents of an ethnic group were not human beings, and that they could be subjugated and subjected to the most criminal oppressions, or even erased from the face of the Earth with a never before conceived final solution. The disintegration of realism has also marked the arts, and it was to be expected that the sciences were no less with the relativistic drift on the one hand and indeterministic probabilistic on the other in the foundations of science. The “_Shut up and calculate_” prevailed or the disinterest in the real causes of the phenomena as a typical dress of the professional physicist. The 20th century was therefore not the _short century_, but on the contrary the _long century_, which also extends into ours with its negative cultural effects. A change of course in Earth Sciences could trigger a domino effect for the renewal of other disciplines and put an end to the _long century_. _SUNTO_ Il secolo scorso è stato improntato da una caratteristica che ha accomunato molte attività umane. In filosofia si è tentato di convincere gli addetti ai lavori, gli studenti e la popolazione più istruita, che la verità è irraggiungibile, o addirittura non esiste, o è solo riflesso del pensiero. Nel campo della politica, dell’etica e della morale, i nuovi mezzi di comunicazione della prima metà del XX secolo, in primis la radio seguita dalla stampa, ed i potenti che li controllavano, sono riusciti nella inaudita impresa di far credere a larghissimi strati della popolazione che gli esponenti di una etnia non fossero esseri umani, e che li si potesse soggiogare e sottoporre alle più criminali angherie, o addirittura cancellarli dalla faccia della Terra con una mai prima concepita soluzione finale. Il disgregarsi del realismo ha improntato anche le arti, e bisognava aspettarsi che le scienze non fossero da meno con la deriva relativistica da una parte e probabilistica indeterministica dall’altra nei fondamenti della scienza. Prevalse il “Shut up and calculate” (zitto e calcola) ovvero il disinteresse per le vere cause dei fenomeni come veste tipica del fisico professionista. Il XX secolo non è quindi stato il secolo breve, ma al contrario il secolo lungo, che si spinge anche nel nostro con i suoi effetti culturali negativi. Un cambiamento di rotta nelle Scienze della Terra potrebbe innescare un effetto domino per il rinnovamento delle altre discipline e porre fine al secolo lungo. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hegel and Herder on Art, History, and ReasonKristin GjesdalThe introduction of a historical perspective in aesthetics is usually traced back to Hegel's 1820 lectures on fine art. Given at the University of Berlin, these lectures were amongst Hegel's most successful and best attended.1 By then a recognized intellectual figure, Hegel sets out to salvage art from its subjectivization in Kantian and romantic aesthetics, but ends up declaring that (...) art, considered in its highest vocation, is a thing of the past. This judgment on art—that its greatness is a thing of the past—follows from Hegel's attempt to combine a notion of art's historicity with a conception of its absolute essence. Hegel, however, was not the first to think systematically about the historicity of art. For this aspect of art—and, indeed, of reason too—was explored philosophically a good sixty years before Hegel's Berlin lectures by a young and aspiring student of Kant's, namely Johann Gottfried Herder. In a series of essays and fragments, Herder develops an advanced and elaborate alternative to Hegel's conception, a fundamentally non-essentialist approach to art, history, and reason.Over the past twenty years or so, Hegel's attempt to combine an essentialist and an historicist approach to art has been revitalized, with increasing force and sophistication, by Arthur Danto.2 The attempts to rehabilitate Herder's aesthetics, however, have been few and far between.3 This is the aim of the present essay, which seeks to contrast the young Herder's non-essentialist understanding of the historicity of art with Hegel's essentialist views on the artwork's historicity, pleading for a rehabilitation of the former.4 I approach this task from three different directions. First, I offer a brief account of Herder's and Hegel's views on reason, history, and art. Second, I look closer at their conceptions of classical tragedy and sculpture, which, due to Winckelmann's studies, [End Page 17] were perceived at the time as the gateway to a historically sensitive conception of culture as such. Finally, I round off by looking at some of the hermeneutic implications of Herder's non-essentialist standpoint.IAccording to Hegel, a phenomenologically mature and accountable philosophy is distinguished by its readiness to reflect on its own, historical presuppositions. It must acknowledge the critical commitments of modern thinking, but also take into account how these commitments are the result of spirit's laborious journey through history. Only by combining the perspective of modernity with the resources of tradition may philosophy inhabit a place where systematicity and historicity concur. Reality may now be exhausted in the form of a speculative logic. This, according to Hegel, is the end of history, but as the end of history, it is also the dawn of a new era, that of free and self-determining spirit.Hegel's notion of the end of history testifies to a formidable optimism about the power of critical thought. In modernity, Hegel claims, art and religion no longer emerge as adequate media of self-reflection. It is philosophy that has taken on this task. Considered from the standpoint of modernity, religion and art are no longer appropriate forms of expression; now only the conceptual optics of philosophy adequately reflects our deepest truths and values.5Artistically speaking, this moment may well emerge as a loss. For even though Hegel never claims that art, as such, will no longer be produced,6 he reckons it will not be produced in the same spirit as before. No longer expressive of a shared, ethical and political commitment, art is not brought forth by necessity. Intellectually speaking, however, the end of art triggers a different response. Not only does the end of art represent another step towards the conceptual self-determination of spirit. It also follows that only when a phenomenon such as art has finally fulfilled its historical possibilities can it be brought to philosophical clarity about itself. Only after art can we know conceptually what art is. Aesthetics can only begin at the point when art, considered in its highest vocation, no longer holds a historical future.IIAs a young and... (shrink)