Damascius (c.462–c.550), Greek Neoplatonist philosopher, last head of the Athenian Academy before its closure by Justinian in A.D. 529. Born probably in Damascus, he studied first in Alexandria, and then moved to Athens shortly before Proclus’s death in 485. He returned to Alexandria, where he attended the lectures of Ammonius, but came back again to Athens in around 515, to assume the headship of the Academy. After the closure, he retired briefly with some other philosophers, including Simplicius, to Persia, but left after about a year, probably for Syria, where he died. He composed many works, including a life of his master Isidorus, which survives in truncated form; commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories, On the Heavens, and Meteorologics I (all lost); commentaries on Plato’s Alcibiades, Phaedo, Philebus, and Parmenides, which survive; and a surviving treatise On First Principles. His philosophical system is a further elaboration of the scholastic Neoplatonism of Proclus, exhibiting a great proliferation of metaphysical entities. See also NEOPLATONISM. J.M.D. Danto, Arthur Coleman (b.1924), American philosopher of art and art history who has also contributed to the philosophies of history, action, knowledge, science, and metaphilosophy. Among his influential studies in the history of philosophy are books on Nietzsche, Sartre, and Indian thought.
Danto arrives at his philosophy of art through his ‘method of indiscernibles,’ which has greatly influenced contemporary philosophical aesthetics. According to his metaphilosophy, genuine philosophical questions arise when there is a theoretical need to differentiate two things that are perceptually indiscernible – such as prudential actions versus moral actions (Kant), causal chains versus constant conjunctions (Hume), and perfect dreams versus reality (Descartes). Applying the method to the philosophy of art, Danto asks what distinguishes an artwork, such as Warhol’s Brillo Box, from its perceptually indiscernible, real-world counterparts, such as Brillo boxes by Proctor and Gamble. His answer – his partial definition of art – is that x is a work of art only if (1) x is about something and (2) x embodies its meaning (i.e., discovers a mode of presentation intended to be appropriate to whatever subject x is about). These two necessary conditions, Danto claims, enable us to distinguish between artworks and real things – between Warhol’s Brillo Box and Proctor and Gamble’s.
However, critics have pointed out that these conditions fail, since real Brillo boxes are about something (Brillo) about which they embody or convey meanings through their mode of presentation (viz., that Brillo is clean, fresh, and dynamic). Moreover, this is not an isolated example. Danto’s theory of art confronts systematic difficulties in differentiating real cultural artifacts, such as industrial packages, from artworks proper.
In addition to his philosophy of art, Danto proposes a philosophy of art history. Like Hegel, Danto maintains that art history – as a developmental, progressive process – has ended. Danto believes that modern art has been primarily reflexive (i.e., about itself); it has attempted to use its own forms and strategies to disclose the essential nature of art. Cubism and abstract expressionism, for example, exhibit saliently the two-dimensional nature of painting. With each experiment, modern art has gotten closer to disclosing its own essence. But, Danto argues, with works such as Warhol’s Brillo Box, artists have taken the philosophical project of self-definition as far as they can, since once an artist like Warhol has shown that artworks can be perceptually indiscernible from ‘real things’ and, therefore, can look like anything, there is nothing further that the artist qua artist can show through the medium of appearances about the nature of art. The task of defining art must be reassigned to philosophers to be treated discursively, and art history – as the developmental, progressive narrative of self-definition – ends. Since that turn of events was putatively precipitated by Warhol in the 1960s, Danto calls the present period of art making ‘post-historical.’ As an art critic for The Nation, he has been chronicling its vicissitudes for a decade and a half. Some dissenters, nevertheless, have been unhappy with Danto’s claim that art history has ended because, they maintain, he has failed to demonstrate that the only prospects for a developmental, progressive history of art reside in the project of the self-definition of art. See also AESTHETIC. N.C.