Abstract
My paper aims to challenge Arthur Danto's position concerning beauty held in his book The Abuse of Beauty. Danto introduced three independent, albeit overlapping theses 1) there are more aesthetic qualities in art apart from beauty; 2) there exists a distinction between internal and external beauty in art; and 3) there is a class of qualities in art responsible for modification of an emotional attitude of a viewer (called inflectors) there.
Several philosophers recently addressed Danto's arguments ; however, to my knowledge, nobody paid attention to the possible tension in Danto's book. In my contribution, I will argue that beauty (and any other aesthetic quality) cannot be inflector (a quality modifying attitude of a viewer) and external at once.
In the first part of my paper, I will clarify Danto's position in The Abuse of Beauty, especially concerning the three previously identified theses. In the second section, I will focus on the criticism of Danto concerning the tension outlined above.
My argumentation will consider Michael Dummett's understanding of Gottlob Frege's notion of coloring since Danto based his inflecting on Fregean theory. I aim to demonstrate that associations tied with inflectors enter our process of artwork's interpretation and impact our emotional response