The Work on Oneself: musings on Wittgenstein’s legacy for philosophy of art and art education

Abstract: The present text discusses Wittgenstein’s later works. We attempt to establish the following: (A) Wittgenstein’s later philosophy was first understood by Morris Weitz as an opportunity to develop new ideas on aesthetics and philosophy of art, although Wittgenstein himself haven’t made those developments. (B) Weitz’s interpretation of Wittgenstein jumpstarts a debate concerned with definitional aspects within these fields. (C) This debate is vividly ongoing and one of its most recent figures is Noël Carroll. (D) Carroll’s methodological account for art identification without essential definitions is a relevant response to other accounts within the field, especially to Weitz. (E) Because Carroll’s account evokes art identification as something oriented by language, critique and narrative making, contact with others, etc., his account seems to be a truly return to some of Wittgenstein original ideas; specially on art criticism as something entirely dependent of art appreciation and of learning to “work on oneself” - in the sense that art appreciation requires a work on one’s own perception and beliefs. Finally, it is our opinion that this return to Wittgenstein through Carroll’s account evokes the idea that art education is a process of revisiting one’s own perceptions and beliefs by means of an encounter with history of art, culture, concrete contexts of language usage, etc.; things that represent the instance of a radical otherness.

摘要：本文探讨维特根斯坦的后期著作。我们旨在论证如下观点：(A) 莫里斯·韦茨（Morris Weitz）最早将维特根斯坦后期哲学视作拓展美学与艺术哲学新思想的契机，尽管维特根斯坦本人并未做出此类理论拓展；(B) 韦茨对维特根斯坦的解读，开启了这两个领域内围绕定义性议题的学术论争；(C) 这场论争至今仍热烈持续，其中最新的代表学者之一便是诺埃尔·卡罗尔（Noël Carroll）；(D) 卡罗尔针对无需本质定义的艺术识别所提出的方法论阐释，是对该领域内其他学术主张——尤其是韦茨的理论——的颇具针对性的回应；(E) 由于卡罗尔将艺术识别阐释为以语言、批判与叙事建构、人际互动等为导向的活动，其理论似乎真正回归了维特根斯坦的部分原创思想——尤其是在艺术批评层面：艺术批评完全依托于艺术鉴赏，以及学习"自我省察"——此处"自我省察"的意涵为，艺术鉴赏需要个体对自身感知与信念进行反思梳理。最后，本文认为，经由卡罗尔的理论回归维特根斯坦的路径，也引出了这样一种观点：艺术教育是一个通过接触艺术史、文化、具体的语言使用语境等事物——这些事物均代表着彻底的他者性实例——来重新审视自身感知与信念的过程。