ABSTRACT
Historically, philosophers have put forward various features or characteristics as essential to art. Likewise, because there are so many kinds of arts, and because they have such very different features, if art has any sort of essence, it might well be a relation. This chapter looks more closely at this notion, in particular at the view that the essence of art is constituted by historical relations. Many people, then, including many philosophers and artists, have been critical of the view that there is any essence to art, to what makes something an artwork. Artworks are artworks not because of any defining property or relation but, rather, because they share a "family resemblance". The primary task of aesthetics is not to seek a theory but to elucidate the concept of art. Morris Weitz makes a strong case for antiessentialism, that is, the position that there is simply no essence to art.
