On Richard Shusterman's Pragmatist Challenge to Arthur Danto's Philosophy of Art

Abstract

This article tries to show that Richard Shusterman's pragmatist challenge to Arthur Danto's philosophy of art fails. Three individual criticisms of Danto are extracted from Shusterman's texts, and they are all considered unsuccessful. First, I shall argue that Danto's theory allows much more room for aesthetic experience than Shusterman's criticism suggests. Second, essential to Danto's philosophy of art is the distinction between art and reality, and by framing that distinction in terms of Danto's understanding of philosophical problems, Danto's theory can be seen not to involve the sort of distinction between art and reality that Shusterman's “wrapper model”–criticism presumes. Third, it is argued that Shusterman's way of contesting Danto's philosophy of art by offering a different reading of Andy Warhol's Brillo Box than the one Shusterman presumes Danto to hold does not, eventually, manage to undermine the starting point of Danto's philosophy of art. The article ends by presenting a critical remark on Shusterman's pragmatist aesthetics drawn from Danto's theory.