Emancipation Narrative

Chapter 2 presents Danto’s intoxicated pursuit of art’s liberation and the historical narrative that led him to his most strident claims: first, about what it was possible for art to do when, and second, when the philosophy of art came to know its proper task. The more Danto addressed Hegelian, Marxist, Nietzschean, and Sartrean passages of thought, the greater his conviction that while social or political critique can motivate the philosopher almost as a will to freedom, equality, and justice, the analytical project of definition had finally to rest alone on the logic of the concept.