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    Carmelics

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    Made withinDC&Austin
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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that George Dickie's institutional theory emerged precisely from recognizing that phenomenological definitions of the aesthetic are irremediably circular, suggesting the problem is structural, not incidental.

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Institutional theory merely relocates circularity: art is defined by the artworld, but membership in the artworld requires the ability to recognize art.
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    • 2.Phenomenological definitions aren't necessarily circular; they can identify genuinely shared aesthetic properties without presupposing what counts as art.
      ?

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    • 3.Dickie's diagnosis overgeneralizes—some phenomenological accounts (e.g., Kant's disinterestedness) provide non-circular grounding independent of art status.
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Phenomenological approaches define art by aesthetic experience, but aesthetic experience is identified by its relation to art—creating circular reasoning.
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    • 2.Institutional theory escapes circularity by grounding aesthetics in social practices and historical contexts rather than subjective perception.
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    • 3.The circularity problem persists across phenomenological variants, indicating a fundamental structural flaw rather than a fixable definitional error.
      ?

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