John Wisdom—Things and Persons

Symposium: Things and Persons
D. M. Mackinnon, H. A. Hodges, John Wisdom
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society.
Supplementary Volumes, Vol. 22 (1948), pp. 179-215

[SK's comments]

[202]

III.—By JOHN WISDOM.

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[206]

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3. To return.
MacKinnon wants ethical problems taken seriously,
and perhaps we ought to say
that

he wants them taken seriously
not merely
by people who have a particular problem to deal with,
but also
by people who are dealing with a problem of some generality
even though,
as in a problem play,
the problem is presented through a particular case.

Connected with this
which is, I believe, his main concern
are two other points :

(1) He thinks that
many ethical problems are
better put

in terms of people

than

in terms of acts.

Thus he says that writers like Kierkegaard, Buber and Marcel raise the problem of the individual.

He also says that Butler,
as opposed to a utilitarian,
argues that
the proper subject of the moralist is the individual or person in his nature and in his relation with his fellows,
and that
he refuses consequently to allow that we can so to speak
"absorb

ethical reflection

in discussion of

the means of promoting good".

Beardsley, Morgan, and Mothersill—On Art and The Definitions of the Arts

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.