Differing discourses on art between art history and philosophical aesthetics

The disciplines of Art History and Philosophical Aesthetics both study and discuss art; however, they do so in dissimilar ways. This dissertation investigates how scholars of either field address primary questions, and how such questioning reveals disciplinary differences in methodologies, analyses, and assessments. Through analysis of responses to the questions of “what is Art?†and “how should Art be evaluated?†this dissertation investigates a historical tracing of approaches to these two questions by important scholars in the fields, including Aristotle, David Hume, Arthur Danto, Giorgio Vasari, Johannes Winckelmann, Erwin Panofsky, and Linda Nochlin in order to discern whether such investigation will reveal relevant discrepancies between the fields. Through this investigation, certain historical trends become evident. Too, certain commonalities and differences between these major voices become evident.

Ultimately, however, this direct comparison of questions does not identify the major reasons for discrepancies between the fields for several reasons. Primarily, this format of question comparison derives from the field of philosophy, and analyzing two fields by means of the methodology of one disproportionately advantages that field. Further, discerning the agreements and disagreements of particular scholars reveals differences of opinion between these particular scholars, yet fails to reveal systemic discrepancies between the fields. Conclusions reached in this project, then, suggest that differences between the fields are ingrained in the different natures of either discipline. This project ultimately concludes, then, that some means of translating between the fields, such that either can better understand the other, would enhance cross-disciplinary discussions of the arts.