Aaron Meskin on the Definition of Art

Philosophy Bites

Nigel Warburton

Education, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.6 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 30 May 2017

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What is Art? That's not an easy question to answer. Some philosophers even think it can't be answered. Aaron Meskin discusses this question on this episode of Aesthetics Bites. Aesthetics Bites is a podcast series of interviews with top thinkers in the philosophy of art. It is a collaboration between the London Aesthetics Forum and Philosophy Bites and is made possible by a grant from the British Society of Aesthetics.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is made in
0:02.6	This is Aesthetics Bites, a series for philosophy Bites with me Nigel Warburton and me David Edmonds
0:10.0	Aesthetics Bites is made in association with the London Aesthetics Forum and made possible
0:14.9	by a grant from the British Society of Aesthetics.
0:17.9	What is the definition of a game?
0:20.6	Fitkenstein famously claimed that although games had overlapping similarities
0:24.4	there was nothing that all games had in common.
0:27.0	Some involved a ball, some didn't, some involved team, some didn't, and so on.
0:31.6	So what about art? Is there a single definition?
0:35.1	Aaron Meskin is at Leeds University.
0:38.3	Aaron Meskin, welcome to Aesthetics Spites.
0:41.3	Hi guys, it's really great to be here.
0:43.8	The topic we're going to focus on is the definition of art.
0:47.6	So why do we need a definition of art?
0:49.2	It's fairly obvious what art is, isn't it?
0:51.6	Well, actually I'm going to a conference this afternoon that I'm putting on on
0:56.1	fashion. It's at the London College of Fashion and I think it's not obvious to
1:00.9	many people whether fashion is art or which bits of fashion or art.
1:07.0	I also recently wrote a piece on latte art, the patterns in milk on the top of coffee, and I argue that that was an emerging art form.
1:15.0	I'm not so confident of that but at least it seems like there are cases where we're
1:20.0	not sure whether things are art or not.
1:22.0	So we do have paradigms of art, so Leonardo da Vinci's Monele's there, we have the Beethoven Lake Quartets or
	...

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