Abstract

Ontology is the study of what exists and the nature of the most fundamental categories into which those existents fall. Ontologists offer a map of reality, one divided into such broad, overlapping territories as physical and mental, concrete and abstract, universal and particular. Such a map provides the setting for further philosophical investigation. Ontologists of art seek to locate works of art in this wider terrain, to say where in our universe they fit in. Their governing question is, thus, “What kind of thing is a work of art?”.