Hegel has identified what I have preemptively designated a third aesthetic realm--in addition to natural beauty and artistic beauty--one greatly connected with human life . . . art applied to the enhancement of life . . . But the other border of what I shall designate the Third Realm is equally non-exclusionary, especially when we consider what Hegel singles out under the head of beautiful people--the kind of beauty possessed by Helen of Troy, say, which we must suppose a wonder (...) of nature. But Helen's choice of hairstyles, makeup, or garments would have belonged to the Third Realm, since it would have been chosen for enhancement, like the setting of a jewel. (shrink)

Scientific thought and its burdens is a book to search for the ways in which science has been understood in history and the way we conceive it today. It argues that every human phenomenon has certain mental frameworks through which it is manifested. Then it raises the question: through which mental frameworks is science manifested? First of all, science is a cognitive activity and as such it is an attempt to acquire knowledge of certain objects or phenomena around us. In (...) that case, it must have an epistemological framework, which is developed in this book as the epistemology of science; then, it is an activity carried out by a community of scholars and their students in an uninterrupted chain of tradition. This gives us the sociological framework. Based on these fundamental frameworks, i.e. the cognitive and sociological approach, the concept of science is defined. Due to the lack of a satisfactory epistemological and sociological framework, taken together, many crucial concepts, such as scientific process, scientific consciousness and worldview, concerning the rise and development of science within a civilization has not adequately been explained. This book thus brings a fresh understanding of sociological concepts concerning science, such as scientific community and tradition. Sufficient material is brought in from the history of science unfolding itself within three civilizations; Greek, Islamic and Western, in order to vindicate the framework in which scientific thought in these communities emerged. (shrink)

Mr. Danto argues that recent developments in the artworld, in particular the production of works of art that cannot be told from ordinary things, make urgent the need for a new theory of art and make plain the factors such a theory can and cannot involve. In the course of constructing such a theory, he seeks to demonstrate the relationship between philosophy and art, as well as the connections that hold between art and social institutions and art history. The (...) book distinguishes what belongs to artistic theory from what has traditionally been confused with it, namely aesthetic theory and offers as well a systematic account of metaphor, expression, and style, together with an original account 0f artistic representation. A wealth of examples, drawn especially from recent and contemporary art, illuminate the argument. (shrink)

In this acclaimed work, first published in 1986, world-renowned scholar Arthur C. Danto explored the inextricably linked but often misunderstood relationship between art and philosophy. In light of the book's impact--especially the essay "The End of Art," which dramatically announced that art ended in the 1960s--this enhanced edition includes a foreword by Jonathan Gilmore that discusses how scholarship has changed in response to it. Complete with a new bibliography of work on and influenced by Danto's ideas, _The Philosophical (...) Disenfranchisement of Art_ continues to be of interest to anyone who thinks seriously about art, as well as to philosophers, aestheticians, and art historians. (shrink)

Knjiga povezuje filozofsko obrazovanje i teme koje su svima poznate iz osobnog iskustva (ljubav, starost, umjetničko stvaranje, čitanje itd.). Ova je knjiga dijelom ispovjednog karaktera i po tome bliska autobiografskoj i memoarskoj beletristici, ali uključuje i spoznaje preuzete iz filozofije, psihologije, potom iz visoke kulture, iz kulturne industrije, ponekad u bizarnoj mješavini sastavnica koje proizvode neobične posljedice i neočekivane učinke.

In The Abuse of Beauty, art critic and philosopher Arthur Danto explains how the notion of beauty as anathema to art arose and flourished and offers a new way of looking at art and beauty. He draws on the thought of artists, critics, and philosophers such as Rimbaud, Fry, Matisse, and Greenberg, to reposition beauty as one of many modes -- along with sexuality, sublimity, disgust, and horror -- through which the human sensibility expresses itself. 20 black-and-white illustrations are (...) included. (shrink)

A study of the philosophical problems associated with the concept of action. Professor Danto is concerned to isolate logically the notion of a 'basic action' and to examine the way in which context and intention, for example, can convert physiological movements into significant actions. He finds many suggestive parallels between the concepts - the logical architecture - of action and cognition and in developing this theme he becomes involved in and proposes new approaches to various long-standing problems connected with (...) causality, determinism and materialism. As in his earlier books, Analytical Philosophy of History and Analytical Philosophy of Knowledge, Professor Danto places the discussion in a broad historical and philosophical perspective and brings to it a wide reading and an unusual range of interests. He is always prepared to venture novel ideas to stimulate further debate and research and the book as a whole is presented as an original contribution to a subject which is attracting increasing attention from philosophers and from psychologists with an interest in the conceptual assumptions behind their work. (shrink)

What is it to be a work of art? Renowned author and critic Arthur C. Danto addresses this fundamental, complex question. Part philosophical monograph and part memoiristic meditation, _What Art Is _challenges the popular interpretation that art is an indefinable concept, instead bringing to light the properties that constitute universal meaning. Danto argues that despite varied approaches, a work of art is always defined by two essential criteria: meaning and embodiment, as well as one additional criterion contributed by (...) the viewer: interpretation. Danto crafts his argument in an accessible manner that engages with both philosophy and art across genres and eras, beginning with Plato’s definition of art in _The Republic_, and continuing through the progress of art as a series of discoveries, including such innovations as perspective, chiaroscuro, and physiognomy. Danto concludes with a fascinating discussion of Andy Warhol’s famous shipping cartons, which are visually indistinguishable from the everyday objects they represent. Throughout, Danto considers the contributions of philosophers including Descartes, Kant, and Hegel, and artists from Michelangelo and Poussin to Duchamp and Warhol, in this far-reaching examination of the interconnectivity and universality of aesthetic production. (shrink)

Now in its third edition, _Narration and Knowledge_ is a classic work exploring the nature of historical knowledge and its reliance on narrative. Analytical philosopher Arthur C. Danto introduces the concept of "narrative sentences," in which an event is described with reference to later events and discusses why such sentences cannot be understood until the later event happens. Danto compares narrative and scientific explanation and explores the legitimacy of historical laws. He also argues that history is an autonomous (...) and humanist discipline incapable of being reduced to scientific descriptions. Lydia Goehr's new introduction illustrates Danto's main arguments by questioning her very role, first, as an introducer of a book that has not yet been read by readers and, second, as an interpreter of a book written forty years ago. Frank Ankersmit's conclusion revisits the initial impact of the publication of _Narration and Knowledge_ and considers its enduring legacy. (shrink)

Within the history of western philosophy, there have been a number of classic ways of arguing for the existence of God. The most important of these are the teleological argument, the ontological argument, the cosmological argument, the moral argument, and a loose family of pragmatic considerations affirming the prudence or desirability of theistic belief. Demonstrating the weaknesses of these approaches is crucial for establishing the ‘negative’ case for atheism. This essay begins by defining what it is that philosophers normally means (...) by ‘God’—i.e., what it is that the classic arguments in the philosophy of religion are arguing about. It then outlines and critiques each main approach in turn, focusing primarily on its most classic and influential expressions within the western philosophical tradition. (shrink)

Few philosophers are as widely read or as widely misunderstood as Friedrich Nietzsche. When Danto's classic study was first published in 1965, many regarded Nietzsche as a brilliant but somewhat erratic thinker. Danto, however, presented a radically different picture, arguing that Nietzsche offered a systematic and coherent philosophy that anticipated many of the questions that define contemporary philosophy. Danto's clear and insightful commentaries helped canonize Nietzsche as a philosopher and continue to illuminate subtleties in Nietzsche's work as (...) well as his immense contributions to the philosophies of science, language, and logic. This new edition, which includes five additional essays, not only further enhances our understanding of Nietzsche's philosophy; it responds to the misunderstandings that continue to muddy his intellectual reputation. Even today, Nietzsche is seen as everything from a precursor of feminism and deconstruction to a prophetic writer and spokesperson for disgruntled teenage boys. As Danto points out in his preface, Nietzsche's writings have purportedly inspired recent acts of violence and school shootings. Danto counters these misreadings by elaborating an anti-Nietzschian philosophy from within Nietzsche's own philosophy "in the hope of disarming the rabid Nietzsche and neutralizing the vivid frightening images that have inspired sociopaths for over a century." The essays also consider specific works by Nietzsche, including _Human, All Too Human_ and _The Genealogy of Morals_, as well as the philosopher's artistic metaphysics and semantical nihilism. (shrink)

This work is intended to be a textbook for the fundamentals of theoriesand methods in the social sciences and the humanities. Along with theknowledge of the existing theories and methods, this book will provide theanalytical tools that will help the reader comprehend the hidden assumptionsand philosophical underpinnings from a comparative and critical perspective.More precisely, this book aims to introduce not only theories and methods butalso the worldviews from which they emerge and the paradigms that they arerooted in. Crystallizing the ontological, (...) epistemological and methodologicalcategories in mind, this book will also help the reader be consistent in researchquestions, methods and conclusions... (shrink)

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)

In Danto's view, Andy Warhol's Brillo Box was not only a radical attack on traditional definitions of the art work; it brought the history of Western art to a close. In this collection of interconnected essays, he grapples with this and many more of the most challenging issues in art today, from the problems of contemporary pluralism to the dilemmas of censorship and state support for artists.

" The essays also consider specific works by Nietzsche, including Human, All Too Humanand The Genealogy of Morals, as well as the philosopher's artistic metaphysics and semantical nihilism.