The Socratic Quest in Art and Philosophy

Abstract

The question of defining art is one of the most long-standing in aesthetics. Some might even say that it is the core question of aesthetics. One recent trend in the debate over the nature of art has been the turn to historicism. The term is actually quite ambiguous in this context. There are, I would argue, two leading competing schools of historicism, pragmatist historicism and realist historicism. Joe Margolis is the most well-known pragmatist historicist in the analytic tradition. At the Summer Institute in Histories of the Arts, Margolis took the controversial position that the past can change. Hamlet has changed because of its history of interpretation. His position here was in accord with that of Jamesian pragmatism. For James, truth is something which is dynamic, not static. Verification is a process by which something becomes true. But verification can never be fully completed. was once true can become false and vice versa. Realist historicism has been defended by such writers as Arthur Danto, Jerrold Levinson, and Nod Carroll. The realist holds that the past does not change. Either something is or is not art. Either interpretation X is the (or a) correct interpretation or it is not. And this is so forever. I In this paper I will defend a pragmatist form of historicism. There are two major fronts in this debate: theory of art and theory of interpretation. My concern here will be with the first front. After sketching out my version of pragmatist historicism I will respond to NoM Carroll's defense of realist historicism. However my response is not intended to be limited to Carroll's version of realist historicism. It is directed against the entire school. The form of pragmatist historicism which I will defend is unlike some other forms in that it calls for revival of the concept of This does not mean that I favor a return to traditional essentialism. I will not argue that there are Instead, I believe that there are that correspond to the Socratic search for essences and that these might well bear the name of although they are not and in the Platonic sense. They are associated with the concepts eternal and unchanging because they are taken as ifthey were and unchanging. The question What is art?, when stated in a philosophical way, searches for such an essence. sorts of are essences? I would like to borrow and extend Joe Margolis' concept of emergent entities here. Essences are culturally emergent entities.2 In this respect they are like persons and works of art. They do not exist independently in some other world but are emergent upon physical and upon other culturally emergent and their relations. In particular, the essence of art is a secondlevel emergent entity which is emergent upon the interaction of such first-order culturally emergent as artists, critics, art historians, philosophers, and works of art. In an important sense it is emergent upon the practices of artists, critics, art historians, and philosophers. I shall argue shortly that these practices also, in turn, depend on a notion of essence. This claim is limited to kind terms such as art, history, philosophy. It is not intended to be extended to natural kind terms such as water. Therefore I will call these cultural essences. Cultural essences change historically. They are the objects of insights by philosophers, art ists, and others during specific historical periods. An insight into the essence of art in 1990 will be very different from an insight into the essence of