Paper's abstract

Raymond Boudon, About the objectivity of artistic values or the artistic values between platonism and conventionalism
Contemporary thinking about art often takes on a sceptical aspect, like thinking on moral or knowledge: artistic values would be collective illusions created either by anonymous social forces mentioned by the Marxist and Durkheimian traditions, or by the power of the "worlds of art". These conventionalist theories are interesting because they underline the weaknesses of platonizing theories of aesthetic values, but they are difficult to believe in. Here we offer to see in artistic values the effect of systems of strong reasons: it is for objective motives that a work of art is qualified strong or weak. However, one must keep in mind the fact that these reasons may not, in the field of the "Beautiful" as well as in others, appear immediately. Their coming into evidence is on the contrary most often the result of a social process which is not so far from judicial trials.

Key Words : art, conventionalism, theory, Plato, objective
t. 40, 1995 : p. 76-95

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