Arthur C. Danto (1924-2013)

Arthur Danto was one of my two greatest inspirations when I was first studying philosophy (Richard Wollheim was the other). In truth, at the time, when I was considering going to graduate school, I was looking around somewhat desperately for philosophers whose tendrils extended into the world in ways that I found compelling and worth following out. And Danto's work was singular in this regard.

I was rereading last night, after learning of his death, what I was able to pull up online of The Transfiguration of the Commonplace: A Philosophy of Art. I was struck by this passage:

Nietzsche, who was deeply sensitive to art, began his philosophical cycle with that, but went on systematically to touch base with every major philosophical question, while Kant, who appears to have been singularly insensitive to art, completed his cycle with what stands as one of th major philosophical treatments of art in the entire literature.

Twenty years ago, I think I thought of Danto's own contribution to the philosophy of art somewhat as he sees Nietzsche's: as a sensitivity to art that leads to a philosophy that covers everything, and engulfs the world. Now I would be sooner inclined to think of Danto as closer to Kant: as someone whose actual taste in art I find mostly misguided, to the extent that taste can be misguided, who was far too preoccupied with mid-century hucksterism passing itself off as self-reflexivity and thus as art-become-philosophy, but who nonetheless was great enough as a philosopher to develop profound and enduring insights about art from these unpromising objects.

Comments

[Iron Rinn]

Danto's analysis of Warhol credited the artist with more critical intelligence than he had, while maybe underplaying his audacity. More aggravating, perceiving depth in Warhol's games is a symptom of the analytic malady that mistakes, say, mereology for profundity. But Danto was a brilliant philosopher who wrote enjoyable prose, and his work should be foisted on all smart young people who wish both to think clearly and enjoy the world.