Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 The situation and tasks of the philosophy of art
- 2 Representation, imitation, and resemblance
- 3 Beauty and form
- 4 Expression
- 5 Originality and imagination
- 6 Understanding art
- 7 Identifying and evaluating art
- 8 Art and emotion
- 9 Art and morality
- 10 Art and society: some contemporary practices of art
- 11 Epilogue: the evidence of things not seen
- Bibliography
- Index
11 - Epilogue: the evidence of things not seen
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 The situation and tasks of the philosophy of art
- 2 Representation, imitation, and resemblance
- 3 Beauty and form
- 4 Expression
- 5 Originality and imagination
- 6 Understanding art
- 7 Identifying and evaluating art
- 8 Art and emotion
- 9 Art and morality
- 10 Art and society: some contemporary practices of art
- 11 Epilogue: the evidence of things not seen
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Throughout these chapters I have repeatedly invoked the formula that works of art present a subject matter as a focus for thought and emotional attitude, distinctively fused to the imaginative exploration of material. This formula proposes that works of art typically have representational, expressive, and formal dimensions, all of which, both independently and in interaction, are normal foci of attention in making and responding to a work. I have attempted to outline debates about how original works might be made and what their interest is, how works of art distinctively call for interpretation, how they engage our emotions, how they explore the exercise of agency, and how they enter into and comment on wider social developments.
What, then, is the status of this formula that undertakes to sum up the dimensions of art and to lend some order to the debates? Is it a definition of art? Does it specify conditions that are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for anything being a work of art?
I do propose this formula as a definition, but not as a specification of necessary and sufficient conditions. Instead this formula is proposed as a specification of criteria, in Wittgenstein's sense of that term, for calling something art. Pain-behavior, for example, is a criterion for pain, according to Wittgenstein. It is, first of all, inconceivable that in general pain should have no relation to pain-behavior.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art , pp. 259 - 263Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003