An Ontology of Art

154 Pages·1989·15.216 MB·English

by  Gregory Currie (auth.)

AN ONTOLOGY OF ART
An Ontology of Art
Gregory Currie
Pal grave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-20040-5 ISBN 978-1-349-20038-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20038-2
©Scots Philosophical Club, 1989
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1989 978-0-333-46076-4
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1989
ISBN 978-0-312-02856-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Currie, Gregory.
An ontology of art/Gregory Currie.
p. em.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-312-02856-5
1. Art-Philosophy. I. Title.
N70.C89 1989
701-dcl9 88--38728
CIP
For Penny
Contents
Preface x
Acknowledgements xii
1 Introduction 1
1. The project 1
2. Types and tokens 3
3. A theory to be refuted 4
4. Art works as action types 7
5. The multiplicity of instances 8
6. Some logical considerations 8
7. The problem of forgery 10
8. Ontology and appreciation 11
9. Kinds of works 13
10. Autographidallographic 14
11. A disclaimer 15
2 Empiricism 17
1. What is empiricism? 17
2. Empiricism and supervenience 18
3. Aesthetic properties 25
4. Why 'empiricism'? 26
5. Empiricism and the IMH 27
6. A first argument against empiricism 28
7. How to relativise aesthetic properties 31
8. Moving further away from empiricism 34
9. Aesthetic and art-historical properties 40
vii
viii Contents
10. A conclusion about aesthetic value 41
II. Contextual dependence in art and science 44
3 Art Works as Action Types 46
I. Introduction 46
2. The structural account of the work 46
3. Musical works and performance means 49
4. An objection to the structural view 50
5. Correct and incorrect instances of a work 53
6. Works as norm kinds 55
7. Works as created 56
8. Works as indicated structures 57
9. Are works created? 61
10. Some constraints on theory 64
II. Works as action types 66
12. A question about heuristics 71
13. Referential properties 73
14. Some reflections on the theory 74
15. The problem of pictures 78
16. Supervenience again 79
17. Transworld identification of works 80
4 Authenticity 85
I. Preliminaries 85
2. Is the IMH revisionary? 85
3. An important difference between visual and non-
visual arts 89
4. The intentional fallacy 91
5. Anti-empiricism and the IMH 92
Contents ix
6. The artist's relation to the work 96
7. Counterfactual dependence 98
8. Historical uniqueness 102
9. The problem of architecture 104
10. Forgeries and reproductions 105
11. Goodman's project 108
12. Looking 109
13. Looking and aesthetic discrimination 111
14. Forgery again 115
15. Looking revisited 117
16. Works and their instances 120
17. The problem of prints 124
18. Autographic!allographic again 124
19. Embodiment 125
20. Conclusions 127
Notes 130
References 135
Index 139
Preface
Recent work in aesthetics displays a tendency to regard an art
work's history, particularly the circumstances of its production, as
bearing on its aesthetic qualities. There is less talk now of an
'intentional fallacy', and the claim that aesthetic appreciation can
be isolated from the work's historical context is regarded with
some scepticism. Along with this tendency there is discernible an
attempt to re-evaluate old answers to the question, 'What is a work
of art?', and to go beyond them to something more in keeping
with an appreciation of the work's historical dimension. But recent
answers to this question fail, I think, to give this historical
dimension its proper role. Ontology has failed to keep pace with
epistemology in this area. My aim is to bring about a closer
connection between the two.
The structure of my argument is as follows. In Chapter 1 I state
my thesis and explain some of the background to it. Reduced to a
slogan that thesis is this: all art works belong to the same ontological
kind - action types. And all art works, including those in such
apparently singular arts as painting and sculpture (where it is
normal to identify the work with a unique object) may have many
instances with a status equal to that of the 'authentic' instance. In
Chapter 2 I try to motivate my account of art works by developing
a theory about the range of features of a work that may be relevant
to its appreciation. In Chapter 3 I use this account to motivate the
thesis that art works are action types. In Chapter 4 I turn to the
question of whether all kinds of works of art are capable of multiple
instantiation.
In this book I have tried to combine systematic argument, some
of it polemical, with accessibility to students who are beginning to
study the philosophy of art. I would like the book to be viewed
both as a contribution to research and as an introduction, though
not an impartial one, to some central topics in aesthetics. But these
aims are not easy to reconcile, and there are probably times when
the text will be tedious to the specialist and less than wholly clear
to the student. In my defence I say to the specialist that it is worth
while discussing these issues in a context that presupposes a
minimum of philosophical background, since background
x
Preface xi
assumptions often turn out to be highly questionable. And to the
student I say that the best way to learn philosophy is to embrace
controversy from the first, rather than to begin with a judicious
and impartial summing up of the alternatives.
It would have been possible to write a much longer book on this
subject. At various points it was tempting to look at the history of
aesthetic writing for guidance, to flesh out the analytical points
with a closer study of examples from the history of art, to consider
what further responses might be made to my arguments. But it
seems to me that there is value in dealing with the issue in a way
that will facilitate a broad overview of the whole position. Too
often the core of a philosophical argument is obscured by a wealth
of detail and the pursuit of alternative strategies. I hope that this
book will give a sharper focus to what is currently a rather diffuse
debate; I do not expect that it will reduce the opposition to silence.
Finally, I should like to mention here the appearance of a work
that suggests a growing interest among art historians with the
methodology of their subject. Michael Baxandall's Patterns of In ten
tion (Yale University Press, 1985) provides a number of case studies
in the analysis of what I call here the 'heuristic' of a work. I suggest
that Chapters 2 and 3 of my book provide something like the
explanatory framework towards which Baxandall is moving.
GREGORY CURRIE