The Concept of the Arts. A new Conception.

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Georg W. Bertram
• Subject Area: Theoretical Philosophy
• Term: from 2015 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 284138227

The project aims to develop a new conception of the concept of the arts from the perspective of philosophical aesthetics. The project's central thesis lies in the idea that the specific differences determining each art form do not logically precede individual works of art, but are rather part and parcel of a process which successful works of art bring into being. Thus, each successful work of art simultaneously determines anew the concept and consistency of the particular art form to which it belongs. If no successful work of art can be readily deduced from previously existing works of art, then the identity of a given art form stands to be newly determined by each individual work of art. The identity of a particular art form is thus the product of an open-ended history of aesthetically successful works of art. As such, the arts contain, in their relation to one another, a determinate as well as an indeterminate moment: The arts are determinate insofar as they differ from one another. However, they are indeterminate insofar as their differences from one another are not fixed, but rather historical. In contrast to conceptions of the arts that place primary focus either on the internal unity of the various art forms or on the differences between them, the project will try to conceive of such differences on the basis of immanent historical relations between the various forms of art, historical relations that are driven by successful works of art The claim that each successful work of art negotiates the consistency of its corresponding art form anew makes clear that the disappearance of art forms and the emergence of new art forms are not exceptional events in the history of the arts, but rather events brought about necessarily by the specific historical relation individual art works have to the art forms they shape.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants