Work and Object: Explorations in the Metaphysics of Art - Hardcover

Lamarque, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199577463 ISBN 13: 9780199577460

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2010

Synopsis

Work and Object is a study of fundamental questions in the metaphysics of art, notably how works relate to the materials that constitute them. Issues about the creation of works, what is essential and inessential to their identity, their distinct kinds of properties, including aesthetic properties, their amenability to interpretation, their style, the conditions under which they can go out of existence, and their relation to perceptually indistinguishable doubles (e.g. forgeries and parodies), are raised and debated. A core theme is that works like paintings, music, literature, sculpture, architecture, films, photographs, multi-media installations, and many more besides, have fundamental features in common, as cultural artefacts, in spite of enormous surface differences. It is their nature as distinct kinds of things, grounded in distinct ontological categories, that is the subject of this enquiry. Although much of the discussion is abstract, based in analytical metaphysics, there are numerous specific applications, including a study of Jean-Paul Sartre's novel La Nausee and recent conceptual art. Some surprising conclusions are derived, about the identity conditions of works and about the difference, often, between what a work seems to be and what it really is.

About this title

About the Author

Peter Lamarque is Professor of Philosophy at the University of York. He joined the Department of Philosophy in 2000. Prior to that, he was Ferens Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hull and Head of the Philosophy Department between 1995 and 2000. He was a lecturer and then senior lecturer at the University of Stirling between 1972 and 1995. From 1995 to 2008 he was Editor of the British Journal of Aesthetics.

Review

Peter Lamarque's wittily titled book ... is to be welcomed for the way in which it demonstrates the significance of its subject matter and its centrality within the analytical canon. Employing his stylist philosophical prose, Lamaerque raises, and offers answers to, the central questions in the metaphysics of art. Furthermore, and I think this may be the work's prime source of value, the book elegantly combines and elaborates a set of answers to these questions in such a way as to complete the reader with a complete metaphysics of art that has claim to represent hegemonic opinion within the discipline. ... I really enjoyed this book. I recommend it heartily as an antidote to anyone tempted to think of the metaphysics of art as a philosophical backwater. * Julian Dodd, Mind * All of the writings are scholarly and articulate, and the book they together compose would make a fine addition to any thinkers library. * Jeffrey Strayer, Philosophy in Review *

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0199577463
• ISBN 13: 9780199577460
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 264