The Art Circle. by George DickieReview by: Arthor FineNoûs, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Jun., 1986), pp. 281-282Published by: WileyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2215399 .

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DICKIE'S ART CIRCLE 281

making causal judgments even though they are fallible, against the Cartesian claim that we ought to accept only the absolutely certain and indubitable; but to do that is not to vindicate the causal judgments of science as opposed to the causal judgments of superstition. To justify (Newtonian) science against superstition a further argument is needed. (cf. Wilson (1983c)). Capaldi's error is, in a way, complementary to Jones'. Where Jones focuses on Cicero and overlooks the Newton in Hume, Capaldi in his rush to get to the Newton in Hume misses the Cicero.

13Cf. Wilson (1983c). 14Cf. Wilson (forthcoming b). '5The view in question is adopted, for example, by Sellars; cf. his (1964). In this con-

nection, see Wilson (1975), (1983). For an excellent discussion of Hume's position, cf. Meinong (1877).

'6Cf. Bergmann (1952). '7Meinong (1877) shows how Berkely's contribution, while important, is negative, in

its attack on abstract ideas (in Locke's sense); and that it waited for Hume to add to this a positive account of how men use and come to use general terms.

'8Notable exceptions that do not neglect the essentially social nature of thought are Capaldi (1975) and Livingston (1984).

George Dickie, The Art Circle (Haven Publications, New York, 1984)

ARTHOR FINE

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

The bewildering variety of products and practices in the contemporary world of the arts, along with that world's virtual obsession with innova- tion and change lends credence to an anti-essentialist attitude towards works of art. For just as Wittgenstein contends that no central "essence" binds together all the different things that are correctly referred to as games, so is one tempted to draw the same anti-essentialist conclusion with regard to works of art. Among current philosophies of art two programs stand out as responding in especially innovative ways to this anti-essentialist challenge. One is the program of Arthur Danto, who holds that being a representation (or being "about" something) is an essential and necessary condition for being a work of art. Thus Danto tries to assimilate art to representational language, in a broad sense, and looks for insight by judiciously transferring metaphors from one realm to another.' George Dickie has developed a different essentialist response that does not en- dorse this linguistic assimilation. Instead, in Art and the Aesthetic2, Dickie proposed an "institutional" analysis, leading to a kind of sociological defini- tion of a work of art. Dickie's account has been the subject of much discus- sion and criticism and, sensitive to that, Dickie has now revised the in- stitutional theory in a new book called The Art Circle.

The title gives the game away. As Dickie delightfully puts it:

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282 NOUS

In Art and the Aesthetic I cheerfully admitted to the circularity involved in the one definition formulated there. In the new version, nothing is admit- ted, the circularity is flaunted. (The Art Circle, p. 12.)

In fact what Dickie draws out of critical discussions, including his own, is a mature understanding of what philosophical "definitions" are about, and the ways in which circularity can be a vice, or a virtue. He introduces the idea of an "inflected concept" as "a member of a set of concepts which bend in on themselves, presupposing and supporting one another." (The Art Circle, p. 84). He puts this idea to work in a kind of art-philosophical dictionary that inflects the concepts of an artist, a work of art, a public, the artworld, and an artworld system. The result is a new institutional theory that Dickie develops and illustrates in terms of the critical literature pertaining to the old one.

This is a slim volume (it runs to only 116 pages) but it is a gem, polished and worked over with the care the ideas deserve, and with the attention to detail that only someone who cares can give. It is both an informative essay on the arts, and a sophisticated piece of philosophical reflection. All aestheticians will read it, as they must. But the sections on philosophical method, which are at the center of Dickie's new pro- posal, are important in themselves, and will interest anyone with a con- cern for philosophical analysis. Dickie's prose is so simple and lucid, here, that these sections would be especially appropriate for general introduc- tory texts and anthologies (where they would be a pleasure to teach).

Although Dickie's program is essentialist, it is lean (to borrow Dickie's own term), and it has such a sociological cast as to almost guarantee that hardcore essentialists will want more. Of course the anti-essentialist challengers (present company included) will find that what Dickie offers is already too much. It remains to be seen whether the mean that Dickie achieves, although admittedly in a gem of a book, is actually the golden one.

NOTES

'Arthur Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981).

2George Dickie, Art and the Aesthetic (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974).

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