Overview

"Art and Abstract Objects presents a lively philosophical exchange between the philosophy of art and the core areas of philosophy. The standard way of thinking about non-repeatable (single-instance) artworks such as paintings, drawings, and non-cast sculpture is that they are concrete (i.e., material, causally efficacious, located in space and time). Da Vinci's Mona Lisa is currently located in Paris. Richard Serra's Tilted Arc is 73 tonnes of solid steel. Johannes Vermeer's The Concert was stolen in 1990 and remains missing. Michaelangelo's David was attacked with a hammer in 1991. By contrast, the standard way of thinking about repeatable (multiple-instance) artworks such as novels, poems, plays, operas, films, symphonies is that they must be abstract (i.e., immaterial, causally inert, outside space-time): consider the current location of Melville's Moby Dick, the weight of Yeats' ""Sailing to Byzantium"", or how one might go about stealing Puccini's La Bohème or vandalizing Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 9. Although novels, poems, and symphonies may appear radically unlike stock abstract objects such as numbers, sets, and propositions, most philosophers of art think that for the basic intuitions, practices, and conventions surrounding such works to be preserved, repeatable artworks must be abstracta.This volume examines how philosophical enquiry into art might itself productively inform or be productively informed by enquiry into abstracta taking place within not just metaphysics but also the philosophy of mathematics, epistemology, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind and language. While the contributors chiefly focus on the relationship between philosophy of art and contemporary metaphysics with respect to the overlap issue of abstracta, they provide a methodological blueprint from which scholars working both within and beyond philosophy of art can begin building responsible, mutually informative, and productive relationships between their respective fields."

Full Product Details

Author:   Christy Mag Uidhir (University of Houston)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press
Imprint:   Oxford University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 16.30cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 24.00cm
Weight:   0.624kg
ISBN:  

9780199691494

ISBN 10:   0199691495
Pages:   320
Publication Date:   17 January 2013
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order  
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Table of Contents

List of Contributors Acknowledgements Christy Mag Uidhir: Introduction: Art, Metaphysics, and The Paradox of Standards General Ontological Issues 1: Guy Rohrbaugh: Must Ontological Pragmatism Be Self-Defeating? 2: Jerrold Levinson: Indication, Abstraction, and Individuation 3: Marcus Rossberg: Destroying Artworks Informative Comparisons 4: Roy T. Cook: Art, Open-Endedness, and Indefinite Extensibility 5: P.D. Magnus: Historical Individuals Like Anas platyrhynchos and 'Classical Gas' 6: Shieva Kleinschmidt & Jacob Ross: Repeatable Artwork Sentences and Generics Arguments Against and Alternatives To 7: Allan Hazlett: Against Repeatable Artworks 8: Ross Cameron: How to be a Nominalist and a Fictional Realist 9: Andrew Kania: Platonism vs. Nominalism in Contemporary Musical Ontology Abstracta Across the Arts 10: Hud Hudson: Reflections on the Metaphysics of Sculpture 11: Sherri Irvin: Installation Art and Performance: A Shared Ontology 12: David Davies: What Type of 'Type' is a Film? 13: Joseph Moore: Musical Works: A Mash-Up Index

Reviews

[T]here is much new and thought-provoking material contained in this rather eclectic volume. Daniel Wilson, British Journal of Aesthetics This is a very interesting anthology on a set of topics at the center of the now lively research area where analytic philosophy of art and contemporary metaphysics meet... All the essays repay attention, and everyone concerned with this area should read this book... Mag Uidhir has put together a stimulating collection of papers, and he deserves our thanks for doing so. Robert Howell, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

This is a very interesting anthology on a set of topics at the center of the now lively research area where analytic philosophy of art and contemporary metaphysics meet... All the essays repay attention, and everyone concerned with this area should read this book... Mag Uidhir has put together a stimulating collection of papers, and he deserves our thanks for doing so. Robert Howell, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

Author Information

Christy Mag Uidhir is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Houston. His main area of research is the philosophy of art. He has published articles in such journals as Philosophers' Imprint, Philosophical Studies, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, American Philosophical Quarterly, The British Journal of Aesthetics, and The Journal of Aesthetics & Art Criticism. He is currently at work on an original monograph, tentatively titled The Attempt Theory of Art (under contract with Oxford University Press).

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