Ted Cohen—The Possibility of Art

Philosophy Looks at the Arts
ed. Joseph Margolis
(Third Edition, 1987)

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[186]

10. The Possibility of Art:
Remarks on a Proposal by Dickie

TED COHEN
[orig. 1973]

... Like much of Dickie's best work, this essay ["Defining Art"] is brief, direct, and convincing ... This time, however, I think he has tried to make things more simple and ingenuous than they can be.

The definition Dickie presents ...

A work of art in the descriptive sense is (1) an artifact (2) upon which some society or some sub-group of a society has conferred the status of candidate for appreciation .

... it may be helpful to note three special features of Dickie's thesis.

MARGOLIS—The Definition of Art

Philosophy Looks at the Arts
ed. Joseph Margolis
(Third Edition, 1987)

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[137]

Part Two

The Definition of Art

...

The trouble with any effort to fix the basic category-term, "work of art," is that it will depend on what counts as an aesthetic point of view.

But
what counts as an aesthetic point of view cannot itself be decided by some simple inspection of actual usage.

Philosophers seem to decide,
more than to find,
what the boundaries of aesthetic interest are
...

GEORGE DICKIE—The Myth of the Aesthetic Attitude

Philosophy Looks at the Arts
ed. Joseph Margolis
(Third Edition, 1987)

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What to do with this, knowing that it comes not at the end but at the beginning of a long series of refinements, abandonments and reformulations?

I only know how to do one thing, so that's what I'll be doing here.

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[100]

The Myth of the Aesthetic Attitude

GEORGE DICKIE

[orig. 1964]

Some recent articles¹ have suggested the unsatisfactoriness of the notion of the aesthetic attitude and it is now time for a fresh look at that encrusted article of faith.

Note 1 lists two articles:

Marshall Cohen, "Appearance and the Aesthetic Attitude" (1959)

Joseph Margolis, "Aesthetic Perception" (1960)

This conception has been valuable to aesthetics and criticism in helping wean them from a sole concern with beauty and related notions. However, I shall argue that the aesthetic attitude is a myth...