Normativity and art

The article examines an original idea about the role of normative reasons for art. Attempts by art historians to explain artists’ actions in relation to works of art by deducing their meanings and symbolism fail to yield the desired results, as they have focused not on normative factors but on contingent factors that exist only due to the potential for a variety of possible linguistic associations and the desire of art historians to tell stories.
The key question of the research ‘How to make art rightly?’ focuses primarily on artists’ understandings of the normative order operating in the art world. Since a work of art is the direct result of the artists’ actions, a suitable theory of action is sought to analyze this type of normative order. In contrast to universalist-oriented normative theories (Derek Parfit, Henry Sidgwick), a particularist theory in the spirit of Jonathan Dancy is proposed.

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