INTRODUCING THE OXFORD SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY TO THE AMERICAN AUDIENCE

WEITZ, MORRIS.

Oxford Philosophy.

[No place], 1953. 8vo. In the original printed wrappers. Offprint from "The Philosophical Review", Vol LXII, No. 2, April 1953. Author's presentation inscription to verso of front wrapper: "To Prof. Jørgensen, / With personal regards, / M. Weitz". Previous owner's book plates to verso of front wrapper [Carl Henrik Koch]. Light miscolouring to front wrapper and a few marginal underlignings throughout, otherwise a fine copy. Pp. 187-233.

Scarce offprint issue with author's presentation inscription of this influential and famous work which is widely regarded as being the work that introduced the then developing Oxford school of philosophy to the American audience.

Morris Weitz was an American aesthetician and philosopher. He received his doctorate from the University of Michigan. During the course of his career he taught at Vassar College, at Ohio State University and at Brandeis University.

Weitz was one of the first philosophers to recognize the difficulty posed for philosophy of art by the rapid proliferation of art movements in the twentieth century, from modernism to dadaism. If the "readymades" (a urinal, a snow shovel, a bottle rack, etc.) of the avant-garde artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) could count as art, then traditional conceptions would have to be revised. Weitz proposed that all that binds together the disparate products called "art" are loosely connected "family resemblances," a notion drawn from Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations (1953). (New Dictionary Of The History Of Ideas, p. 16)

Order-nr.: 47445