The Ontology of Art: What Can We Learn from Borges’s "Menard"?

Abstract

The question I want to analyze in this paper can be summarized as follows: what is the nature of works of art? This question can be divided into two separate ones: (1) what differential feature separate objects which are works of art from other objects which we usually do not consider as such?, and (2) to what kind of ontological category do works of art belong to? The recent discussions around this second topic are usually framed by the more traditional ontological discussion about universals. Thus, in order to answer the second question, philosophers generally use the distinction between universal-particular or type-token. But nobody would say that every universal (if she is universalist) or every particular (if particularist) is a work of art. Because works of art should have "something more". But what is this "something more"? In this paper I will try to answer these questions inspired by the ideas J.L. Borges developed in the short story: "Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote."