Art As Language

G. L. Hagberg is Professor of Philosophy at Bard College. He is the author of Meaning and Interpretation: Wittgenstein, Henry James, and Literary Knowledge, also from Cornell.

The arguments are persuasive and deftly executed, and the examples are well chosen. Initiates into the main debates of analytic aesthetics who share the author's sense that the latter tradition is in need of internal critique... will not be disappointed.- Casey Haskins, SUNY at Purchase (The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism) Art as Language is in itself extremely valuable as an example of the still largely unappreciated relevance of Wittgenstein's work to traditional philosophical issues.... This book, as a more or less encyclopedic critique of aesthetic theories from a Wittgensteinian perspective, will be enlightening to aesthetic theorists who want to know, not what Wittgenstein said about art, but what the relevance of his work is to their use of language as a point of reference for interpreting art.(Choice) In a series of acute arguments, Hagberg dismantles the region of grand aesthetic theory that defines art in the terms philosophy has traditionally used to define language.... Written with excellence in argumentation, judiciousness, and a capacious knowledge of Wittgenstein.- Daniel Herwitz (Common Knowledge)