Arthur Danto

Arthur Danto was the Johnsonian Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia University, where he served on the faculty for over four decades from 1951 until his retirement in 1992. Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and raised in Detroit, he earned a B.A. from Wayne State University in 1948, an M.A. from Columbia University in 1949, and a Ph.D. from Columbia in 1952. During his graduate studies, he held a Fulbright Fellowship at the University of Paris in 1950, studying under Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Danto progressed through the ranks at Columbia as instructor in 1951, assistant professor in 1954, associate professor in 1959, full professor in 1966, and Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy in 1975. He chaired the Department of Philosophy from 1976 to 1985, edited the Journal of Philosophy, and held leadership roles including Vice-President and President of the American Philosophical Association and President of the American Society for Aesthetics. A World War II Army veteran, Danto also served as art critic for The Nation from 1984 to 2009 and was an accomplished artist whose woodcuts were exhibited at institutions such as the Art Institute of Chicago.

Danto's research interests encompassed analytical philosophy of history, knowledge, and action; philosophy of art; theory of representations; philosophical psychology; and the works of Hegel, Merleau-Ponty, and Schopenhauer. His seminal 1964 essay 'The Artworld,' prompted by Andy Warhol's Brillo Boxes, introduced the concept of indiscernibles and revolutionized aesthetics by challenging distinctions between art and non-art, ultimately articulating the 'end of art' thesis. Major publications include Analytical Philosophy of History (1965), Analytical Philosophy of Knowledge (1968, republished as Narration and Knowledge in 1985), Analytical Philosophy of Action (1973), The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (1981), Connections to the World: The Basic Concepts of Philosophy (1989), Encounters and Reflections: Art in the Historical Present (1990, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Prize for Criticism), and What Art Is (2013). He received two Guggenheim Fellowships and an ACLS Fellowship. Danto's prolific writings bridged analytical and continental traditions, profoundly influencing philosophy and art criticism through precise logical distinctions and engagement with avant-garde developments.