art, only that there will not be a single metanarrative for the future his-
tory of art.”i9The end of art that is of interest to Danto is the end of art
as an object of study with fixed limits. For Danto, art becomes of a set
of mirrors of our modern condition, and it reveals a multiplicity of sto-
ries about that condition. Art no longer has to induce the “retinal flutter”
that Duchamp referenced with disdain; such flutters are dismissed as
mere signs of sensory gratification. Art should be able to skip the senses
and go straight to the intellect. Danto’s talk of the end of art is part of
his move to separate the philosophy of art from aesthetics. This sort of
end is of interest to art critics, philosophers, artists, and other insiders of
the avant garde world, a world that turns its back on aesthetics and sen-
sory pleasures, precisely those elements that lure most of us to the world
of art in the first place.
In what follows, I shall notbe interested in tracking the end of art
that affects the specialist audience Danto has in mind: my focus will be
on the end of art as something that matters to all human beings. To inves-
tigate this end, I shall first have to make a case for why art matters to
humans at all, and then move to a discussion of what directions in art
might upset the meaningful role that art can play in human life.
In situating their discussion of art, both Adorno and Danto focus
upon specific aspects of the modern condition and its role in shaping art.
Whereas Danto’s reflections on art have their origins in the art move-
ments of the 1960s, with special focus on artists such as Duchamp and
Warhol, Adorno is more concerned with how art is affected by social
and political forces that disrupt the march of progress in modernity. His
comments on the fate of art after Auschwitz are an example of his con-
cern with making modernity itself a philosophical object of investiga-
tion, in particular, with thematizing the trauma of post-Holocaust
society. The story I want to tell about art is quite different, and more lim-
ited in scope, than either Danto’s or Adorno’s. I shall turn to how aes-
thetic experience came to save one particular prisoner in Auschwitz and
use this case to reflect upon art’s enduring value for human beings.
The thinkers whose insights are most pertinent to my presentation
of the humanizing function of art and the ensuing discussion of both
the factors that might strip art of this humanizing function and those
that might help protect it from corrosive influences, are two figures
whose names do not often surface in discussions of the end of art: John
Stuart Mill^10 and Primo Levi. I turn to Mill, an English philosopher
who espoused liberal ideas that he believed would help society move
away from tyrannies, both political and of the majority, so that true,
human flourishing could be achieved, because I believe that his “harm
The Humanizing Function of Art 77