The Yeoh Tiong Lay Centre for Politics, Philosophy and Law is delighted to host Professor Andrei Marmor (Cornell) during his forthcoming visit to the UK. Marmor will deliver a presentation on his new paper, 'Grounding Art', on the 14 March 2023.

All with an interest are welcome to the in-person only event.

Professor Marmor's paper 'Grounding Art' can be accessed here.

 

Abstract

What makes something a work of art? Can we answer this question in a philosophically satisfactory way? This paper aims to demonstrate that we can, as long as we understand the question as one about metaphysical grounding. The main argument here aims to show that any plausible metaphysical grounding of artworks is going to pull in the direction of an institutional theory of art. In order to clear the way for this argument, the question of metaphysical grounding of artworks is explained and distinguished from a number of similar questions in the vicinity, particularly the much broader question of What is Art? The conclusion that I hope to establish here is that an object is a work of art in virtue of the fact that it is recognized to be an artwork by the practices of recognition that constitute an artworld community or, at least, some significant subset of it. The paper concludes by answering a number of objections to the institutional conception of art, utilizing the metaphysical tools and distinctions explained in the first part of the paper.

 

Speaker Bio

Andrei Marmor is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Philosophy and Law at Cornell University. Prior to joining Cornell in 2015, he was Professor of Philosophy and Maurice Jones Jr Professor of Law at the University of Southern California.

His research interests span philosophy of law, moral, social and political philosophy, and philosophy of language. His most recent book, Foundations of Institutional Reality, was published by Oxford (2023). Other monographs, in addition to a number of edited volumes and dozens of articles, include The Language of Law (Oxford, 2014), Philosophy of Law (Princeton, 2011) and Social Conventions: from language to law (Princeton, 2009). His books and articles also appeared in numerous translations, including in Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Turkish, Farsi, Hebrew, and Italian.