Abstract

Author: Bogusz-Bołtuć Ewa Title: WŁADYSŁAW TATARKIEWICZ’S DISJUNCTIVE DEFINITION OF ART. IN ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY OF ART (Władysława Tatarkiewicza alternatywna definicja sztuki a analityczna filozofia sztuki) Source: Filo-Sofija year: 2011, vol:.13/14, number: 2011/2-3, pages: 591-600 Keywords: WŁADYSŁAW TATARKIEWICZ, ALTERNATIVE DEFINITION OF ART, DISJUNCTIVE DEFINITION OF ART, BERYS GAUT Discipline: PHILOSOPHY Language: POLISH Document type: ARTICLE Publication order reference (Primary author’s office address): E-mail: www:As a historian of ideas, Władysław Tatarkiewicz sought to introduce order to the meanders of philosophical debates of the past, but as a philosopher, he tried to determine what a given thing is. In this essay I will attempt to show that the voice of Tatarkiewicz was significant for the philosophical debate about ‘what art is?’. In the fifties of the twentieth century, Morris Weitz concluded that defining art through describing the necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be a work of art, is unfounded. His thesis not only began the anti-essentialist trend in analytic aesthetics, but also prompted attempts to define art by drawing attention to its relational properties. In the disjunctive definition of art, which he formulated in the late 1960s, Władysław Tatarkiewicz opened a new option, where to get something regarded as a work; it is enough to set certain minimal sufficient conditions. What’s more, this way of defining art seems to be one of the more promising projects. The latest version of the disjunctive definition of art, the cluster definition of art by Berys Gaut, is also part of a trend set by the Tatarkiewicz’s definition