Abstract
The article examines the question of what "understanding an art work" means and offers some considerations about the ranges of understanding that we experience in interpretations of art: the vast scope between the contrasting extremes "expert knowledge" on the one hand and "art blindness" on the other. With respect to the philosophy of later Ludwig Wittgenstein it will be shown what these ranges originate from and why they are unavoidable. This may come as a surprise to some philosophers since Wittgenstein usually is not regarded as someone from whom one might expect pronouncements of an aesthetic nature. But in fact Wittgenstein had spent much time considering questions of art and art theory. Indeed in 1949 he even noted that besides "conceptual" questions only "aesthetic questions" could "really grip" him (CV 2006: 91e) . However, he never formulated his reflections on questions of aesthetics in an extended and coherent series of remarks. Rather his observations in this regard are to be found in individual remarks scattered in considerable quantity throughout the papers of his Nachlass. In the paper at hand a certain number of them has been reconstructed systematically.
First Page
39
Last Page
48
Recommended Citation
Stefan, Majetschak. 2018. "Ranges of Understanding: On the Vast Scope of Art Interpretation. A Wittgensteinian Perspective." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 38, (1): pp.39-48. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol38/iss1/11
