Metaphor and the Philosophy of Art

Abstract

Late 20th century philosophy has been deeply involved in a debate between realism and anti-realism. My particular area of interest is aesthetics/philosophy of art (henceforth “aesthetics”). The debate between realists and anti-realists has raged for many years through the various problem-areas of aesthetics: evaluation, interpretation, representation, creativity, essence of art, and ontology of the work of art. Of course one can be a realist with respect to one kind of thing and not with respect to another. Typically, however, if one is a realist in one problem-area one will be a realist in others. For example, if one is a realist in theory of evaluation then one will probably also be a realist about interpretation, about the nature of art, and about the ontology of art. Realists hold that things exist as they are independently of other things.