Hi Robin

Thanks for your reply.

My term "official" was intended a bit flippantly. I meant that the view in question (that we apply rules to find out what is art and what is not) is the prevailing view among writers in aesthetics – especially analytic – though it is usually implied rather than explicitly stated.  

I don’t claim to ‘speak for “most realistic aestheticians”’ – perish the thought – but my experience at conferences etc is that, when pushed, most will agree that there are in fact no identifiable rules. Certainly, there are very few who are happy to step forward and list them.

Re football, of course one can call it an art if one wants – in the same sense that one talks about the arts of conversation or cooking. But speaking as someone who has played three varieties of football and who still enjoys watching it occasionally, I would never for a nanosecond place it in the same category of human achievement as say Crime and Punishment, Mozart’s piano concertos, or Picasso.  Is that a judgement? Yes certainly - but more of that below.

I certainly don’t hold myself up as ‘a sort of “gold standard” for all human experience of art’ (perish the thought again). My point was that if we interrogate our own experience we will find, I think, that the psychology of our responses to art does not take the form of a judgement. It’s much more like a fascination – a kind of willing absorption into another world. Certainly we often judge later. We say: That was great! That was awful. That was wonderful, etc. But that’s post facto. The psychology of the experience itself is quite different.  I quoted my own experience because it’s the only one I can interrogate. If others disagree and think they respond via a succession of judgements when (for example) they go to a performance of La Bohème, then I have to accept that - though I find it very difficult to understand.

What is my brand of aesthetics? Is has no brand. In fact I think the branding tendency is one of the banes of the philosophy of art – and of philosophy in general. It fosters a sheep-like tendency to ‘follow the brand’ and not think for oneself.  I have certainly been strongly influenced by the theory of art of André Malraux but only after reading very widely in analytic and continental aesthetics – both of which I found to be sorely deficient.  I may be wrong, of course.  But I am happy to defend my positions trench by trench.

You suggest that “aestheticians and fine artists {should] work more collaboratively.” I would be surprised to see it happen. There is a yawning gulf between the philosophy of art and art. One interesting indication of that is the immense gap between the disciplines of aesthetics and the history of art. Which is quite bizarre when you think about it. Imagine if in universities there were departments of the “history of literature” and departments of “literature” – a bizarre thought in itself – and that they seldom had any contact.

DA