In philosophical aesthetics, there has been a recent turn towards what is

called “philosophy of the arts.” The assumption underlying this development

is that, if we want to acquire philosophical insight into the arts, we must do

justice not merely to the ways in which they resemble one another but also

to the ways in which they differ. This is not to say that there is no longer a

place for general theorizing about what artworks in general are or what their

appreciation involves. But we must also be sensitive to the different ways

in which such issues are inflected in different art forms. As we move away

from general theory, however, we need to determine which ways of grouping

the arts are likely to prove most fruitful if our explorations of similarity and

difference are to prove illuminating. To take one example, photography is

in one sense a sister art of cinema – we have moving and still images that

rely on the same general technology. But in another sense it is a sister art of

painting – they both present the eye with a still image, share an interest in

portraiture and have histories that intersect in complex ways.

The place of the performing arts in this new philosophical landscape is

interesting, for the very notion of “the performing arts” already imposes a

structure on the arts. The things usually grouped under this label – music,

dance, and drama – are in some ways strikingly different. For example, they

seem to appeal to different cognitive capacities and different senses. We think

of music as primarily a heard art, dance as primarily a seen art, and drama,

at least as traditionally viewed, as the visual presentation of a narrative that

speaks more to the understanding than to the senses. What, then, links these

arts? Most obviously, it is the activities of performers through which works

are realized for our appreciation. It is not surprising, then, that it is the

notion of artistic performance that poses the most distinctive philosophical

questions about the performing arts.

What is surprising, however, is that few attempts have been made to

systematically study these questions as they apply to the performing arts as

a whole. Rather, most philosophical inquiry bearing on the performing arts

has concerned itself exclusively or primarily with music. There has been a

Preface and

Acknowledgments

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