The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism,
Vol. 20,
No. 2 (Winter, 1961),
pp. 175-187
ON ART AND THE DEFINITIONS OF ARTS: A SYMPOSIUM
[SK's comments]
THE DEFINITIONS OF THE ARTS
Monroe C. Beardsley
THERE IS ONE VALUABLE—but inadequately appreciated—contribution that aesthetics has made to the growth of 20th-century philosophy in general.
Its generic concepts,
art
and
work of art,
have served as
paradigm cases
of most of the forms of
waywardness
to which
concepts
are subject:
they have worked overtime as Horrible Examples.
When philosophers were making much of the point
that
some important terms have
variable meaning,
and in some contexts are
ambiguous,
the term "art" provided a fine example,
especially of
the process-product type
of ambiguity.
In some contexts it certainly entails conscious skill,
but
we recall also Shelley's skylark pouring forth its soul
"in profuse strains of unpremeditated art."
When "emotive meaning" came into view,
with all its devious consequences,
the term "work of art" seemed to provide a fine example of "persuasive definition,"
however defined—
for it has widely been assumed to be
classifiable among
the normative or "emotive" terms.
Finally,
through the influence
(at first clandestine,
but after 1953 public)
of Wittgenstein, and others,
many philosophers gave up
the traditional idea
that
general terms are, or ought to be,
definable by necessary and sufficient conditions—
and then these aesthetic terms became
prime examples
of "family-resemblance" and "open-texture" terms.
