The Methodology of Art (Critical/Rationalist Aesthetics): Project of a New Philosophical Discipline
The Methodology of Art (Critical/Rationalist Aesthetics): Project of a New Philosophical Discipline

Summary/Abstract: This essay presents a project of a new discipline—the methodology of art. By analogy with the methodology of science, the task of the new discipline would be to investigate art as a cognitive activity, in particular, art’s cognitive method. The justification and closer description of the project takes the form of a table comparing the four types of cognition—the exact sciences (interpreted along the Popperian model), the humanities, the methodology of art and art—in terms of their object, method, format of knowledge, relation to truth, ways of justifying beliefs, the possibility of constructing experiments and the like. In the conclusion the essay offers some comments on the “artistic” mode of cognition. The main thesis of the article concerns the need and possibility of rational reflection upon art conceived of as a non-scientific mode of exploration of the human psyche.

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