The philosophy of art has organized around several principal positions across the analytic and continental traditions. The framework engages each by name; they are taken up again at [§8.13.5](<8.13.5 What is Concluded.md>) once the structural account is in view.

*Institutional theory.* Dickie (1974, 1984) and Danto (1964, 1981) developed institutional accounts: a work is art if it has been conferred art-status by the artworld (Dickie) or interpreted as a candidate for appreciation within an artworld-supplied theoretical framework (Danto). The position handles avant-garde and conceptual works elegantly but is widely criticized for its circularity and for its inability to explain art before the institutional apparatus existed. The framework reads institutional theory as picking up real features of the contemporary artworld, while supplying the structural reading: art is the made-vehicle transmission of perspectival readings of structure; the institutional apparatus is one of many cultural contexts within which this transmission has been organized, neither necessary for art's existence nor constitutive of its nature.

*Formalism.* Bell (1914), Greenberg (1960), and the broader formalist tradition treat significant form as constitutive of art — the arrangement of formal elements (line, color, mass, sound, rhythm) being what art *is*, with content as either secondary or constituted by form. The position handles abstract and non-representational work elegantly but struggles with representational art's clear engagement with subjects beyond its formal arrangement. The framework reads formalism as correctly identifying that the medium-grammar of art is constitutive of what art can transmit, while supplying the structural reading: form is the medium through which perspectival readings are rendered, not the content the readings are *of*.

*Expressivism.* Collingwood (1938) and Tolstoy (1898) developed expressivist accounts on which art is the expression of emotion: the artist articulates an emotion through the work, and the audience reconstructs the emotion in response. The position captures something real about art's affective dimension but has trouble with art whose content is not primarily emotional. The framework reads expressivism as correctly identifying that perspectival reading carries affective register, while supplying the structural reading: emotion is one register a perspectival reading can carry, with perspective on structure being more general than emotion alone.

*Aesthetic-experience accounts.* Dewey (1934), Beardsley (1958), and the broader aesthetic-experience tradition locate art's defining feature in the kind of experience it produces in suitably situated receivers. The position captures something real about art's reception side but faces the difficulty that aesthetic experience can be produced by non-art (a sunset, a face) and that some art (challenging modern works) produces little of what is traditionally classified as aesthetic experience. The framework reads aesthetic-experience accounts as picking up real features of art's transmission to receivers, while supplying the structural reading: what the receiver undergoes is a resonating reading shaped by the vehicle, not a separate aesthetic-experience kind.

*Heideggerian and continental accounts.* Heidegger's (1935–36) "The Origin of the Work of Art" developed an influential account on which the artwork sets up a world and lets truth happen in its work-being. Gadamer (1960), Adorno (1970), and Merleau-Ponty (1964) extended the continental tradition. The framework reads these accounts as identifying real features of art — art's capacity to disclose and to challenge — while supplying the structural reading: what is disclosed is structural feature of the medium the perspectival reading registers, with the work as the made-vehicle holding the disclosure available to the receiver.

*Analytic aesthetics.* Walton (1990), Levinson (1990, 2006), Currie (2010), and the contemporary analytic-aesthetics tradition refine specific questions — the ontology of artworks, the role of imagination, the structure of fictional truth, the relation between art and morality. The framework engages this literature as developing the local logic of specific art-related phenomena, with the structural account supplying the framework within which the local debates can be located.

*Critical theory and ideology critique.* From Marx and Benjamin through the Frankfurt School (Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse) to contemporary critical theory, a tradition treats art as inseparable from the social conditions of its production and reception, with ideology critique as a central task. The framework reads critical-theory accounts as correctly identifying that art is socially conditioned — specific works arise in specific historical situations, with the social conditions shaping what can be made and what can be transmitted — while supplying the structural reading: the social conditions condition the *what* of specific artworks; the *that* of art (made-vehicle transmission of perspectival readings) is not socially constructed.

*Adorno and negative dialectics.* Beyond ideology critique, Adorno's (1970) *Aesthetic Theory* presses the sharpest objection a structural account of art must face. Its core is the non-identical: conceptual thought subsumes the particular under the universal and always leaves a remainder, and art's truth-content is its capacity to hold precisely that remainder — what the concept cannot. A metaphysics that derives everything from one necessary structure invites the charge that treating art as just one more structural register is itself an act of subsumption, dissolving the particular work into an instance of a kind. Three further objections follow: that art bears truth exactly where the concept fails, so explaining art *as* transmission threatens to explain away what makes it truth-bearing; that letting suffering speak is itself a condition of truth, so a system that smooths the negative away falsifies itself — a whole that erases its own negative is to that extent false; and that a system claiming to have demonstrated the necessity of all things can revert to the myth and fate enlightenment was meant to escape. The framework reads Adorno as correctly identifying that any account which subsumes the particular and affirms the whole stands condemned — and meets the charge not by resisting the non-identical but by claiming it, the reply taken up at [§8.13.5](<8.13.5 What is Concluded.md>).

*Reductionist evolutionary and cognitive accounts.* Dutton (2009), Bloom (2010), Boyd (2009), and the broader evolutionary-aesthetics tradition treat art as an adaptation, by-product, or culturally evolved phenomenon explicable through cognitive and selection pressures. The framework reads these accounts as picking up real features of art's psychological architecture, while supplying the structural reading: the perspectival-reading transmission art consists in is what subjects at sufficient depth do when they need to share what language cannot carry; specific cognitive and selection pressures condition how the activity is realized but do not constitute it.

*The art/non-art boundary.* A live dispute concerns what distinguishes art from non-art — craft, design, entertainment, propaganda, decoration. Various proposals (institutional, formal, intentional, functional) have been advanced. The framework's structural reading supplies a usable distinction: art is the made-vehicle transmission of perspectival readings of structure, with works whose function is restricted to information-transmission (propaganda, propositional argument), to utility (craft, design), or to mere stimulus (entertainment without perspectival load) sitting outside the structural core, while admitting that hybrid works are common and the boundary is not sharp.

*Authenticity, reproduction, and the digital question.* Benjamin (1936) and the subsequent literature on mechanical reproduction raised questions about authenticity and aura. The recent emergence of generative AI art presses similar questions in new form: what is the perspectival reading transmitted by an artwork whose maker is a generative model? The framework's structural reading supplies a framework: art requires a perspectival reading to be transmitted; whether a generative model has perspectival readings (and what they would consist in) is structurally the same question as whether LLMs engage in propositional understanding ([§8.10.1](<8.10.1 What is Disputed.md>)), currently underdetermined.

The philosophy of art divides over institutional theory, formalism, expressivism, aesthetic-experience accounts, Heideggerian and continental approaches, analytic aesthetics, critical theory and ideology critique, Adorno's negative dialectics, reductionist accounts, the art/non-art boundary, and authenticity-and-reproduction questions. The framework commits to specific answers on each; they are taken up again at [§8.13.5](<8.13.5 What is Concluded.md>) after the structural account is in view.


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← [8.13 Art](<8.13 Art.md>) | [8.13.2 What is Required](<8.13.2 What is Required.md>) →
