Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-m8qmq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T14:06:14.880Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

VIII - A Matter of Meaning It

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Stanley Cavell
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Get access

Summary

It is not surprising that Professors Beardsley and Margolis found what I had to say about modern art and modern philosophy obscure and, I take it, unsympathetic; I tried, in the opening section of my remarks, to give reasons why these subjects are liable to obscurity and unattractiveness—as it were, to make this fact itself a subject of philosophy. (In perhaps the way Hume suggests, in the Introduction to his Dialogues on Natural Religion, that the subject to follow is characterized by alternating obscurity and obviousness.) It is therefore the more surprising that they find me clear enough to agree in several points of interpretation and in one or two major proposals. (1) Both take it as a central motive of my paper to rule out certain developments within recent music as genuine art. (2) Both object to my insistence on the word “fraudulence,” wishing some more neutral description. (3) Accepting the fact that objects of modern art create a problem for aesthetics, but taking the nature of that problem as known, each suggests an alternate line of solution, and in each case the solution is one which is, and is explicitly said to be, philosophically familiar: Beardsley's solution is to define a notion of art (i.e., music) broad enough to include the problematic objects; Margolis' is to regard the problem as another instance of “borderline cases” and therefore to require the discovery of criteria for the “propriety” of treating the new music as art.

Type
Chapter
Information
Must We Mean What We Say?
A Book of Essays
, pp. 213 - 237
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • A Matter of Meaning It
  • Stanley Cavell, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book: Must We Mean What We Say?
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511811753.011
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • A Matter of Meaning It
  • Stanley Cavell, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book: Must We Mean What We Say?
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511811753.011
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • A Matter of Meaning It
  • Stanley Cavell, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book: Must We Mean What We Say?
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511811753.011
Available formats
×