What’s more beautiful: the Mona Lisa or your mom? Is that even a fair comparison? I mean, your mom isn’t one of the most famous works of art ever. She isn’t even a piece of art. But what about a photograph of your mom? What about a photograph of the Mona Lisa? Is that as beautiful as the real thing? Is it even art? If these are the kinds of questions that keep you up at night, then philosophy of art is for you! 🎨 

Philosophy of art is a subfield of aesthetics, one of the five major branches of philosophy. While aesthetics thinks about why anything ever is beautiful, or what beauty is, philosophy of art asks these questions about art itself. The philosophy of art isn’t just art criticism. Art criticism asks questions like “Why is that music making me feel sad?” Obviously, the answer is because it’s by Josh Groban, but like in many parts of philosophy, to make that question philosophical, you just make it shorter: “Why is that music?” 

Philosophers have had a lot of answers to questions like this throughout the years. Take Plato for instance. When it comes to art, think of Plato like the pastor from Footloose and think of art like Kevin Bacon. Kevin Bacon says he wants to do his thing and dance, and Pastor Plato wants to squash his dreams. Plato thought that art was a corruption of reality. For Plato, reality was one step worse than the “forms,” basically like the most perfect version of anything ever, and art was images of reality, which he explains in The Republic is even further from perfect. Why would we want to move in the opposite direction? Basically – no dancing. Hegel, on the other hand, thought art basically rocked. He thought that beauty is the closest we can ever get to understanding the way things actually are, and, since the best art is beautiful, art is helping us understand the fundamental truths of the universe. Maybe it doesn’t always seem that deep, but even philosophers who seem to mostly write about other things get really into the philosophy of art, so it’s definitely worth investigating more!