Arthur Danto Philosopher of Pop

Arthur Danto is a philosopher with a system, whose much discussed aesthetic theory cannot be understood adequately without grasping how it is embedded in his analysis of action, historiography and knowledge. Although some Americans have written about his system, we have as yet too little comprehension of how it appears from the vantage point of Europe. This monograph by a gifted young Italian scholar, which will change that situation, presents a remarkably original, highly sympathetic perspective, one that will surely influence debate in her native country, in the United States, and everywhere that Danto is now being read.

David Carrier

Champney Family Professor

Case Western Reserve University/Cleveland Institute of Art (USA)

Tiziana Andina’s Arthur Danto: Philosopher of Pop, written in a friendly and enthusiastic style that is quite suitable to its subject, should do much to enliven debate about the main themes of Danto’s philosophy of art. Those themes are here, and for the first time, both viewed as a whole and placed in the context of Danto’s broader philosophical commitments, whose metaphysical, epistemological, psychological and linguistic underpinnings are made clear in Andina’s lucid text.

Jerrold Levinson

Distinguished University Professor

University of Maryland (USA)

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

Guggenheim Museum, New York 2010

CHAPTER ONE

ANALYTICAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE SPACE BETWEEN ART AND LIFE

1. Analytical Philosophy According to Danto

2. The Pop Face of Analytical Philosophy

3. A Look at the Continental Tradition: Nietzsche as Philosopher

CHAPTER TWO

THE GUIDELINES OF A SYSTEM: THE WAYS IN WHICH WE REPRESENT

THE WORLD

1. Analytical Philosophy of History

2. Analytical Philosophy of Knowledge and Action

3. The Mind/Body Relationship

4. Fundamental Questions I: Our Representations of the World

5. Fundamental Questions II: Our Connections to the World

CHAPTER THREE

ANALYTICAL PHILOSOPHY TURNS POP AND BECOMES PHILOSOPHY OF ART

1. Danto’s Copernican Revolution

2. What Kind of Thing is a Work of Art? Questions of Ontology

and Interpretation

3. The Importance of Hegel

CHAPTER FOUR

UNDERSTANDING THE BRILLO BOX: THE MORAL HALLMARK OF CRITICAL PLURALISM

1. The World (of art) seen From Manhattan

2. Andy Warhol, American Icon

BIBLIOGRAPHY

NOTES

Review

• November 01, 2012, on “The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism“, vol. 70, n. 4, 1. nov. 2012, pp. 407-408 (DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6245.2012.01531_8.x), by Michael Angelo Tata.