Deduction of Categories in a Definition of Art

Abstract

In the contemporary literature, the most authoritative on the definition of art is the institutional theory that emerged as a response to the radicalizations in modern art associated with ready-made, pop art, conceptualism and other movements. In familiar versions of institutional theory, the participants in the so-called “artworld” (Arthur Danto's term) are enumerated “rhapsodically”, to use Kant's famous expression. In this context, the article is an attempt to “deduce the categories” by which art is defined, using the categorizing positions of the participants in this “artworld”. In order to justify the approach and to relate the problematic to traditional philosophical issues, a brief overview of the “doctrine of categories” (Kategorienlehre) is given.