NEW APPROACHES TO DEFINITION IN CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY OF ART AND FILM-THEORY

Abstract

The article is devoted to the definitional approach in Anglo-American philosophy of art and the new American film-theory (post-theory) during last decades. The problem of concepts clarifying has always been one of the leading ones in analytical philosophy. However, after the essentialist and anti-essentialist periods the recent philosophy of art starts to develop new solutions. The author makes an attempt to compare new methods of defining "art" with the definitional framework in modern film-theory, which is based on Anglo-American analytical philosophy rather than the Grand Theory - the leading paradigm for the second half of the XX century. The underlying question of the article deals with the role of the definitional approach in the relationship between theory and its object. According to this framework, new definitions are closer to noticing concept`s developments more than fixing the stable notion and giving the correct answer on questions like «What is cinema / film / movie? ».

Keywords

• philosophy of art
• film-theory
• post-theory
• definition
• anglo-american analytical philosophy
• cinema
• moving images