Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- Artistic Truth
- Introduction: Critical Hermeneutics
- PART I HERMENEUTICAL MATRIX
- PART II CONSTRUCTIVE CLEARINGS
- PART III LINGUISTIC TURNS
- 7 Logical Positivist Dispute
- 8 Goodman's Nominalism
- 9 Wolterstorff's Realism
- 10 Aesthetic Transformations
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
9 - Wolterstorff's Realism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- Artistic Truth
- Introduction: Critical Hermeneutics
- PART I HERMENEUTICAL MATRIX
- PART II CONSTRUCTIVE CLEARINGS
- PART III LINGUISTIC TURNS
- 7 Logical Positivist Dispute
- 8 Goodman's Nominalism
- 9 Wolterstorff's Realism
- 10 Aesthetic Transformations
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
We cannot evaluate the action of fictional projection by reference to the truth and falsehood of what was claimed. For nothing was claimed.
Nicholas WolterstorffNicholas Wolterstorff's Works and Worlds of Art challenges modern aesthetic emphases on expressive artistic creation (genius) and disinterested aesthetic experience (taste). His alternative is to construe works of art as instruments and objects of action, and to portray representation (mimesis) as an action that is “pervasive and fundamental in the arts” (p. xv). This alternative implies a propositionally inflected and realist correspondence theory of truth. Unlike Goodman, Wolterstorff retains propositions as the locus of truth, and he endorses correspondence as the primary criterion of truth. But unlike the propositionist T. M. Greene, he denies that the propositional content of artworks can be substantially true or false. Central to Wolterstorff's account of art's cognitive functions is the “action” of fictive world projection: presenting “states of affairs” for people “to reflect on, to ponder over, to explore the implications of, to conduct strandwise extrapolation on” (p. 233). This presenting can be either direct (“introducing”) or indirect (“posing of”), and it can be true to actuality or true to a person's or community's beliefs, including the artist's own vision. It does not appear as if the presenting, or the work itself, can be true about something, however. Hence for Wolterstorff artworks cannot be substantially true or false: fictive world projection involves correspondence without truth. That, at least, is the interpretation I propose.
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- Information
- Artistic TruthAesthetics, Discourse, and Imaginative Disclosure, pp. 182 - 202Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004