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Always More Than One Art: Jean-Luc Nancy's The Muses, Ann Taylor

Ann Taylor

Jean-Luc Nancy begins The Muses with an essay entitled, “Why Are There Several Arts And Not Just One?” It is an ambitious essay, one which calls into question not only the specific aesthetic theories of Hegel and Heidegger, but essentially the entire Western aesthetic tradition. While Nancy provides some interesting discussions of the problem as he considers some of the more prominent aesthetic theories in Western philosophy, to what extent does it matter that we know (or do not know) whether art is singular or plural in essence, or what “art” is at all? What is the purpose of philosophizing …