Scrutinizing the Art of Theater

Abstract

In his 1992 address to the American Society for Aesthetics, Peter Kivy suggested that philosophers of art might do best by giving up on grand theorizing (that is, pursuing the definition of art).1 In its place he proposed that they pursue the and imaginative philosophical scrutiny of the individual arts and their individual problems.2 Of course John Passmore and others had said similar things at earlier points,3 but philosophical aesthetics has, it seems to me, finally and robustly taken the turn toward the philosophies of the arts. Much of the best work in philosophical aesthetics over the last fifteen years or so has pursued the route Kivy suggested. James Hamilton's The Art of Theater is part of this turn it is careful and imaginative scrutiny of the art of theater done at the very highest level, and I am delighted to have this opportunity to comment on it.4 In what follows I shall address a number of issues raised by Hamilton's work: the definition of theatrical enactment; the place of pretending and imagining in theatrical performance; the nature of Hamilton's ingredients model and its relation to more traditional accounts of the work/performance relation; the account of theatrical style on offer; and the question of what we have learned from experimental theater. But before I move on to address those aspects of the book's content in detail, let me say something about the pedagogical significance of this work. Although there are a number of legitimate ways to teach introductory courses on aesthetics and the philosophy of art (for example, by following a historical progression or by structuring it around certain key issues), one increasingly attractive option is to teach a course that focuses on those aforementioned individual arts and their individual problems. So, for example, I used to regularly teach graduate seminars in aesthetics to students enrolled