The Commonplace Raised to a Higher Power
Arthur Danto
interviewed by Hans Maes
(excerpt)
This so-called 'method of indiscernibles'...arises, according to Danto, not only in the field of aesthetics but in all other areas of philosophy. Philosophy is supposed to address its subject matter...by seeking the conditions that make the things under scrutiny the kinds of things they are. The appropriate way of seeking these conditions, Danto suggests, is to examine how the thing...differs from an object or event that is ostensibly indiscernible from it.
Ugh.
Could you forgive some of us, just maybe, for seeing in this merely an exercise?
