Art History Versus Aesthetics

Art history and aesthetics -two distinct academic fields--offer very different ways of understanding artworks. Aesthetics considers concepts such as beauty or the sublime; in art history those same ideas appear entangled in particular historical circumstances. How, then, can those two approaches be related? In this unprecedented collection, over twenty of the world's most prominent thinkers on the subject - including Arthur Danto, Stephen Melville, Wendy Steiner, Alexander Nehamas, and Jay Bernstein -- ponder the disconnect between these two disciplines. The volume has a radically innovative organization: it begins with introductions, and centers on an animated conversation among ten historians and aestheticians. That conversation was then sent to twenty scholars for commentary. Their responses are very diverse: some are informal letters, and others full essays with footnotes. Some think they have the answer in hand, and others raise yet more questions. The volume ends with two synopticessays, one by a prominent aesthetician and the other by a literary critic. This stimulating inaugural volume in the new Routledge series "The Art Seminar" presents not one but many answers to the question does philosophy have anything to say to art history?