Education
BA, Wayne State University, 1938. PhD, University of Michigan, 1943.
aesthetics philosophy in literature analytic philosophy
BA, Wayne State University, 1938. PhD, University of Michigan, 1943.
University of Washington, 1944-1945. Vassar College, 1945-1948. Ohio State University, 1954-1969.
Professor, Brandeis University, from 1969.
Main publications:
(1950) Philosophy of the Arts, Harvard: Harvard University Press
new edition, New York: Russell & Russell, 1964.
(1953) ‘Oxford philosophy’. Philosophical Review 62.
(1956) ‘The role of theory in aesthetics'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 15
reprinted in Weitz (ed.), Problems in Aesthetics: An Introductory Book of Readings, New York: Macmillan. 1959
second edition. 1970.
(1963) Philosophy in Literature: Shakespeare, Voltaire, Tolstoy and Proust. Wayne State University Press.
(1964) Hamlet and the Philosophy of Literary Criticism, Chicago: Chicago University Press
reissued London: Faber, 1972.
(1977) The Opening Mind: A Philosophical Study of Humanistic Concepts, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
(1988) Theories of Concepts: A History of the Major Philosophical Tradition, London: Routledge (includes complete bibliography).
Secondary literature:
Abrams, M. H. (1972) ‘What’s the use of theorizing about the arts?’, in M. W. Bloomfield (ed.). In Search of Literary Theory, Ithaca.
Mandelbaum, Maurice (1965) ‘Family resemblances and generalization concerning the arts’, American Philosophical Quarterly 2, 3
reprinted in Weitz (ed.). Problems in Aesthetics: An Introductory Book of Readings, New York: Macmillan, 1959
second edition, 1970.
Weitz wrote extensively on the basic concepts of literary criticism and art history. He also investigated philosophical ideas expressed in literature. In "The role of theory in aesthetics’ (1956) he argued that generalizations about the nature of art, particularly those that assumed that art could be defined in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, involved a logically vain attempt to define what could not be defined and foreclosed on artistic creativity.
These claims stirred Mandelbaum and others to defend the attempt to find a definition of art, although Weitz continued to maintain his view that such an attempt was misguided. Weitz’s later writings, particularly The Opening Mind (1977), expanded his account of open concepts, a notion derived from Wittgenstein's writings on family resemblance terms, and investigated the history of theories of concepts. Sources: Directory of American Scholars, 6th edn.
Pi, complete bibliography in Weitz 1988.