Art Rethought: The Social Practices of Art

As is known to readers of his numerous books on numerous topics, Nicholas Wolterstorff possesses great depth of knowledge and great breadth of interest. At times those two virtues get the better of him in his most recent book, Art Rethought: The Social Practices of Art. Although the book has an approachably down-to-earth prose style suitable for the general public, any reader, lay or academic, will need some sitzfleisch to get through its numerous and sometimes unaccountable digressions, its surfeit of reportage on secondary literature, and—it must be said—its occasionally drawn-out and unsupple interpretive readings of artworks. Don't get me wrong: Art Rethought is obviously the product of a fecund philosophical mind. I imagine Wolterstorff must be a philosopher to whom arguments, definitions, illustrative examples, and quotations occur effortlessly, someone who writes philosophy “in the way that a silkworm produces silk, as the expression of his own nature,” to...