The Oxford Companion to Philosophy Part 9. The book is alphabetized by the whole headings of entries, as distinct from the first word of a heading. Hence, for example, abandonment comes before a priori and a posteriori. It is wise to look elsewhere if something seems to be missing. At the end of the book there is also a useful appendix on Logical Symbols as well as the appendices A Chronological Table of Philosophy and Maps of Philosophy. | 60 art One drawback of an institutional theory is that it cannot easily be used as earlier theories were to persuade us of what is peculiarly valuable about art. Sometimes it is assumed that art is a good thing to the extent that it has purely aesthetic value as distinct from moral or cognitive or utility value. Others think surely rightly that art is also important as a way of gaining understanding of human behaviour and that what value art-products have cannot be divorced from issues of truth and morality. Ideas which have had currency in past theories and which have spread into popular thinking that art achieves a unique insight into higher truths or provides an elevated form of human self-realization should not be dismissed but in philosophy they require cautious investigation. Few philosophers one suspects would be quick to nominate any one value as that possessed by everything which is called art. . aesthetics history of aesthetics problems of emotion and art. R. G. Collingwood The Principles of Art Oxford 1938 . G. Dickie Art and the Aesthetic Ithaca NY 1974 . R. Wollheim Art and its Objects 2nd edn. Cambridge 1980 . art contemporary. Contemporary art-making practices from 1945 to the present can be intelligibly viewed as working the medium a sensuous and intellectual experimentation not just with the physicality of the constituents the paint the graphic line the colour field but with that set of conventions specific to the art world at a particular time the particular techniques procedures and standards both articulated and implicit that discipline and define an art practice. Abstract Expressionists worked with space and form within a single plane to establish complex part-by-part relations that collapsed illusion-istic space while still maintaining the opticality of matter Clement Greenberg . The Minimalists eliminated the optical focus of spatial art using obdurate masses Donald Judd that were aggressively tactile they reduced the bare canvas to a .
