Artistic Truth: Aesthetics, Discourse, and Imaginative Disclosure

It is unfashionable to talk about artistic truth. Yet the issues traditionally addressed under that term have not disappeared. Indeed, questions concerning the role of the artist in society, the relationship between art and knowledge, and the validity of cultural interpretation have intensified. Lambert Zuidervaart challenges current intellectual fashions by proposing a new hermeneutic theory of artistic truth that engages with both analytic and continental philosophies and illuminates the contemporary cultural scene. People turn to the arts as a way of finding orientation in their lives, communities and institutions. However, as the author shows, philosophers, hamstrung by their own theories of truth, have been unsuccessful in accounting for this common feature in our lives. This book portrays artistic truth as a process of imaginative disclosure in which expectations of authenticity, significance and integrity prevail. Understood in this way, truth becomes central to the aesthetic and social value of the arts.