The week we devote to Gallie is designed both to give a different perspective on the kind of solution Kant offers to the problem of the variability of taste and also to give a preview of the problem of saying what is special about art, which will occupy us for the third quarter of the semester.

Mon. sects. I-III (pp. 97-107)

•  After a brief introductory section, Gallie devotes section II to the description and criticism of an idea he refers to at one point (p. 102) as “criticism and meta-criticism without a concept of art.” Although Gallie rejects this in the end, it is an important point of view on aesthetics and one of the reasons for reading his article is the description he gives of it before offering his criticisms.

•  Gallie uses his criticisms of Harold Osborne in section IV mainly as a device to motivate the idea, stated at the end, that art is “essentially complex”and “essentially contested.” Much of our discussion of this idea will be on Wed., but you should think now about how he arrives at it.

Wed. sect. IV (pp. 107-114)

•  In the piece we will read part of for Friday, Gallie will discuss the idea of “essentially contested concepts” in general terms. In section IV, he illustrates it with a discussion of the history of aesthetic theories. And this history is one of interests of the what Gallie says here. In particular, try as best you can to distinguish the five types of aesthetic theory he lists on p. 112. (Since he discusses them in varying detail, it may not be easy to see what he has in mind in each case; the definition at the bottom of the page that tries to combine them all may help.) Then see how he takes this history to support his idea that the concept of art is essentially contested.