Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2018
Abstract
One of the most remarkable recent contributions to the debate concerning definition of art is a book by American philosopher and aesthetician Alva Noë called Strange Tools. Works of art are and has always been "strange tools", says Noë.
The reason is that the main purpose of art is to oppose negative and deadening effects of usual, everyday organized activities (technologies, as Noë puts it). The present paper addresses two main questions: Is the function that Noë descibes as defining art really exclusive (for works of art) enough to become a defining property? What in detail means that the second order activities (art and philosophy) rise out of activities of the first order (usual organized activities, technologies)?