The idea of artistic truth has fallen on hard times. It has received few sustained visits in Anglo-American philosophy since midcentury analyses by John Hospers (1946) and Monroe Beardsley (1958). Even continental philosophers after Martin Heidegger and Theodor W. Adorno have come to doubt its viability. The topic is complex and contentious, and the most important contributions come from thinkers whose work resists paraphrase. One must think twice before entering labyrinthine ruins where contemporary philosophers fear to tread.

Yet the issues traditionally addressed under the label of “artistic truth” have not disappeared. If anything, they have intensified: the role of artists in society, relations between art and knowledge, and questions about validity in cultural interpretations. What has changed is the paradigm with which philosophers work. Whereas philosophers used to sort out such issues in terms of a mediation between epistemic subject and epistemic object and whatever transcends this mediation, now they emphasize interpretation, discourse, and historicity. To revisit the idea of artistic truth is to test the potential and limitations of a postmetaphysical paradigm in contemporary philosophy.

The shift in philosophical paradigm finds a counterpart in the movement from modern to postmodern arts.