[219]
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Volume 2, Number 3, July 1965
V. FAMILY RESEMBLANCES AND GENERALIZATION
CONCERNING THE ARTS
MAURICE MANDELBAUM
[SK's comments]
In 1954 William Elton collected and published a group of essays under the title Aesthetics and Language.
As his introduction made clear,
a common feature of these essays was
the application to aesthetic problems
of
some of the doctrines
characteristic of
recent British linguistic philosophy.
... there have been a number of important articles which, in addition to those contained in the Elton volume, suggest the direction in which this influence runs.
...
"The Task of Defining a Work of Art"
by Paul Ziff,
"The Role of Theory in Aesthetics"
by Morris Weitz,
Charles L. Stevenson's
"On 'What is a
Poem'"
and
W. E. Kennick's
"Does Traditional
Aesthetics Rest on a Mistake?"
In each of them one finds a conviction which was also present in most of the essays in the Elton volume:
that it is a mistake
to offer generalizations concerning the arts,
...
to attempt to discuss
what art, or beauty, or the aesthetic, or a poem,
essentially is.
In partial support of this contention, some writers have
made explicit use
of Wittgenstein's doctrine of family resemblances;
Morris Weitz, for example, ...
However, ... [he] made no attempt to analyze, clarify, or defend
the doctrine itself.
...
