1. The Philosophy of Museums

First, some words on the sub-title: At present, there is no recognized area or sub-field of philosophy that might be called ‘the philosophy of museums'. Since at least the time of Plato philosophers have addressed many topics that are relevant to museum practices (topics from ‘what is a work of art?’ to investigations into the nature of beauty and, more recently, matters of interpretation, conservation, the status of art forgeries, and so on), but the philosophical work on museums themselves has been sparse and often seen as a contribution to the field of philosophy of art or aesthetics. There are some reasons, however, to think museums deserve philosophical attention as a field of their own. For one thing, there are museums that are not dedicated to works of art – there are, for example, natural history museums, and museums dedicated to industry, science, agriculture, food, the memorialization of human tragedy, and so on. Moreover, museums raise substantial, philosophically interesting concerns that go well beyond the art world; museum practices raise questions about social values, economics, philosophy of religion, philosophy of history, ethnicity, theories of truth and responsibility, jurisprudence, and so on. Rather than philosophical work on museums being scattered among a host of sub-fields, I suggest that the time has come to consider bringing such work under a unified heading.

The reasons behind establishing philosophy of museums as a field or sub-field of philosophy is largely due to historically contingent matters and (as I argue at the end of this paper) the reasons behind creating such a field match the reasons behind creating recent sub-fields such as environmental ethics. Given that there are over 50,000 museums today in over 200 countries, there appears to be an excellent opportunity for philosophers who work on the nature, purpose, and values of museums to interact and collaborate with museum institutions and professionals. The field of philosophy of museums may provide a welcome forum to connect philosophers with philosophically oriented curators, the physical and social scientist-scholars who contribute to museum studies, and other museum professionals. This essay is a small contribution to what I hope will become a growing sub-field of interest to philosophers. At the end of this essay, let us re-visit the prospects of such an emerging field.

My initial strategy for articulating a philosophy of museums has been to argue that the very concept of being a museum itself contains vital evaluative elements that one might coax out into a normative account of what it is to be a good or bad museum. It was not long ago that such a line of reasoning would be condemned outright as committing the naturalistic fallacy. The problem of deriving an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ was, of course, given a classic statement in Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature (2001), and then formalized and put to very different, non-Humean use by G.E. Moore in Principia Ethica (1966). Despite the wide agreement in much twentieth century moral philosophy that there is a fallacy here, times have changed. When was the last time you heard a philosophical dialogue come to a decisive end when one of the interlocutors was treated as persona non grata because she committed the naturalistic fallacy? I remember possibly three occasions in the 1980s. For my part, as the intellectual ban on such reasoning has lifted, if only slightly, I have defended the idea that there are many concepts that are (to use a term employed by the Cambridge Platonists) pregnant with values. Arguably, the concepts of being human, being a farmer, being a law, even being a soldier are (if you prefer a more contemporary, less anatomical term) thick on the ground, and it appears that these concepts or terms (in their current usage) inextricably bind together descriptive and evaluative elements. For example, I propose that a person does not understand the concept or term being human if he does not grasp that dismembering the limbs of humans and depriving us of food and water, along with oxygen and the powers to think, move, and so on, are in some ways (ceterus paribus) bad for us or, if you will, unhealthy for humans. Whether you agree with such examples, I fear that there is not a sufficient set of stable values housed in the concept of being a museum. Unfortunately, we probably will need more than an analysis of the concept of being a museum (in the tradition of J. L. Austin) to conclude that if Hitler had succeeded in building the Führermuseum in Austria, it would have been based on such monstrous falsehoods, outrageously distorted values, and perverse aesthetics that it would either be not a museum at all or unworthy of being considered a museum. Alas, I think that if Hitler's museum were built it would deserve our contempt, but it would still be a museum.

Another related pathway into a philosophy of museums, namely discourse ethics, also seems unable to rule out Hitler's museum. In discourse ethics one establishes certain conditions for communication, such as only open-ended communication is permissible, no assumptions should be immune to questioning, the parties to discourse should consider themselves as equals, and so on. As it turns out, I will appeal to some of these conditions in terms of what may be called a philosophical and thus democratic culture. But these principles of fairness in discourse, it seems, need to be defended in a context that involves more than the ideas of ‘discourse’ or ‘communication’. Hitler's museum can well be imagined with paradigmatically clear communication, and while it would not be a site of discourse in terms of even-handed free inquiry, its tightly monitored and controlled discourse would still be discourse in that the museum could foster communication.

So, instead of seeking to derive what a museum ought to be from our concept of what it is to be a museum, or relying on a thick concept of what, ideally, it is to communicate and discuss, I propose that a more promising approach is to identify the kind (or kinds) of culture that we have reason to value and then identify the roles that museums can or should play to sustain and promote that culture. Inspired by the work of Karl Popper, I seek to build a positive case for how museums can provide a uniquely important role in establishing and sustaining a philosophical culture. There are three sections that follow.

In section 2, I offer an outline of a philosophical culture and provide reasons why we should value such a culture. A philosophical culture is valuable both for its own sake, as well as for its providing a framework for a democratic republic or, if it fails to establish a democratic republic, such a culture may yet provide an important challenge to anti-democratic forces.

In section 3, I sketch the ways in which museums may play a role in the promotion of a philosophical culture. I assume and do not argue for many things (for example, I offer no reasons here for not pursuing a theocracy), but with some help from Karl Popper's work on the concepts of open and closed societies I hope to offer enough for you to find value in promoting a philosophical culture in the context of a philosophy of museums. The philosophy of museums that emerges is the Philosophical Culture Museum Model (PCMM). My goal is to make a positive case for the PCMM, rather than to carry out a polemic against a host of alternative philosophical models. The PCMM of museums is ideal and stipulative; it does not depend upon whether it matches up with current, extant museums and their mission statements. In fact, if the PCMM is aligned with what Popper would recognize as a museum in an open society or, for short, an open museum, then some past and present museums align with what Popper would see as the enemies of an open museum.

Section 4 reviews and assesses the strengths of the PCMM over against objections to museum practices by John Dewey, Richard Shusterman, and Michel Foucault. Paradoxically, some of these objections provide evidence of the importance of the PCMM.

The essay ends with further reflections on why the time is right for recognizing the philosophy of museums as a sub-field of philosophy today.

2. What is the Nature and Value of a Philosophical Culture?

In building up the concept of a philosophical culture, let us take a highly selective look at Karl Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies, Volume One: The Spell of Plato.Footnote ¹ In doing so, let us also put aside questions about Popper's personal consistency with his anti-tyrannical stance (some have charged that Popper was too soft on Soviet Marxism) or the substance of his merciless critique of Plato as, essentially, Public Enemy Number One of the open society, and focus instead on Popper's thesis about the cultural importance of philosophy as a practice of independent, critical reflection not bound by the tyranny of either government or group (or, as Popper frequently referenced, tribal) identity.

Popper draws a sharp contrast between closed and open societies. Closed societies are those that are marked by tribal or collective identity and the adherence to traditions and practices that do not allow for the development and flourishing of individual thinking and personal responsibility. A closed society is anti-democratic insofar as governance is not based on individuals entertaining and developing arguments to bring about nonviolent change in political power and policies. In a closed society, when the authority of the state is questioned, opposition parties are likely to be brutally silenced. In Popper's view, many of the enemies of an open, democratic society are pessimistic about average human capacities for self-governance and accountability; they take the cynical view that ordinary persons require the leadership of an elite class or group that can act paternalistically for the good of the whole. Popper's stance may seem unexceptional and a matter of common sense, but at the time of his writing many of us were (and still are) not widely acquainted with his claim that tribalism and an anti-democratic collectivism (along with a distrust in the average person) were strongly advocated by some of the greatest philosophers in the West.

While Popper is highly critical of anti-democratic philosophers, beginning with Heraclitus, and aggressively condemns any hint of authoritarianism in Plato's writings, he construes the central activity of philosophy, as found in Socrates' practice of engaging his fellow Athenians in dialogue, as inherently democratic. The reason why Socrates is hailed as ‘the champion of the open society, and a friend of democracy’, is because Socrates extolled and practiced individual, critical reflection and dialogue on matters of value.Footnote ² Popper interprets Socrates' focus on the care of the soul (as noted in Plato's Apology) as something either different from, or in addition to, caring for one's identity as a soul or individual who is not identical with their body. Rather than Socrates admonishing the Athenians to renounce their concern with their corporeal bodies, Socrates urges the Athenians to care about the love of truth and goodness, to care about their integrity and reason.

I believe that the above description gives us a portrait of what Popper would recognize as pivotal to the practice of philosophy or (literally) the love of wisdom.

From this Socratic-Popperian perspective, a philosopher is an individual who loves wisdom, and this consists in such things as loving the truth about significant matters, a love that entails not loving falsehood. Because a lover of wisdom's first priority is loving goodness, beauty, humaneness, reason, and the like, secondary loves need to be subordinated. In cases of conflict, the love of goodness should trump the desire for fame, allegiance to tribe or the desire to have power over others. It is interesting that Popper sees Socrates specifically in terms of kindness. Presumably kindness is incompatible with simply imposing one's viewpoints on others (ceterus paribus – thus allowing one to use some coercion in maintaining a civil community). The love of beauty and goodness would appear to lead a lover of wisdom into dialogue with others, searching for reasons why some ways of living are more good and beautiful than others. Popper treats Socrates (I suspect rightly) as a fallibilist (such as Popper himself), and so, given that the lover of wisdom is not in possession of infallible, incorrigible knowledge of matters of beautiful and good government, of ways of living, and the like, there is great value in respectful dialogue between lovers of wisdom.

Popper goes on to propose that the kind of culture that includes and encourages the above Socratic practice of loving wisdom will rightly include critical reflection on the challenges facing democracy:

The key, as noted earlier, is only to resort to power when this truly seems to be the wisest course of action after sustained, shared reflection that is honest, impartial, and unaffected by tribal desires or threats.

There is not room here to fill out and defend all the above terms and ideals, but here is a brief defence of the main points in the form of a rhetorical question: If we were to have the time and space to reason further about the adequacy of the above portrait of loving wisdom, don't you think a good way to fill out a fuller account would be by engaging in shared, honest reflection in which each participant loved the truth more than his or her tribal identity, by proceeding non-violently, allowing ourselves to be persuaded (in principle) by the reasons and arguments of others, doing our best to share our love of goodness and beauty, and taking seriously the way others love goodness and beauty?

A philosophical culture, conceived along the lines of Popper's portrait of Socrates, will include some, but perhaps not all the conditions that have been outlined in discourse ethics by Jürgen Habermas or Karl-Otto Apel. The PCMM would require those parties engaged in philosophical exchange to regard each other with respect and as worthy of attention, exercising a principle of charity in terms of interpreting each other's claims favourably, and so on. But there may be cases when the lover of wisdom does not operate on the assumption (often upheld in discourse ethics) that no belief should be exempt from questioning. It may be that there are occasions when a just society built on the love of wisdom needs to treat some rights with unquestioning sanctity, such as the right of free speech and the right of assembly by minority populations, notwithstanding the disapproval of the majority. Such boundaries are part of constitutional democracies that expect their citizens to act with moral responsibility.

What I hope is becoming apparent is that a philosophical culture supports a constitutional, as opposed to merely procedural, democracy. In a narrow, procedural sense, a democracy would include any society in which its population plays a significant role in governance by voting on policies or electing leaders or representatives. Two questions arise when further identifying a democracy: what if the ‘majority’ is composed of only a minority of those people living in the state? For example, what if a necessary condition of voting is being male? Or a landowner? Or an adult? What if certain ethnic groups are not permitted to vote? A second matter concerns what was referenced above, the need to safeguard minorities from a majority violating their fundamental rights. For example, in the German election of March 1933, Hitler's Nazi party received 33% of the votes. This was enough for Hitler to form a government with help from another party. But imagine Hitler received 60% of the votes and then acted swiftly to execute his main rivals and quite openly purge Germany of its Jewish citizens, executing them in large numbers with the support of an increasing percentage of the population. As Hitler killed those who oppose him, the percentage of support he receives would grow to nearly 100%. Under those conditions, would we classify such a state as democratic? In some narrow, lean concept of ‘democracy’ perhaps we would, but our reluctance to do so suggests that the concept of ‘democracy’ today is linked to a respect for individuals that does not allow for an unchecked implementation of majority rule.

In ‘The Constitutional Conception of Democracy’, Jeremy Waldron describes a constitutional democracy that would be supported by what we are calling a philosophical culture.Footnote ⁵ In a philosophical dialogue we need to assume (unless there is clear evidence to the contrary) that all parties are competent to reflect together about the nature of justice and that each of us has a right to be part of the great debates about values, especially as this bears on matters of governance:

It is clear that this conception of democracy is not merely procedural in nature. It is the kind of society that has confidence in the morality and maturity of its citizens, and thus does not allow for the blanket denigration of the minority that, in its exercise of morality and maturity, voted against some policy favoured by the majority:

Waldron amplifies this morality-based approach to democracy with his insistence that persons in a democracy have a responsibility to engage in debate in the course of resolving disagreements:

Waldron's concept of a constitutional democracy seems to provide an extensive political framework that would be supported by the practices of a philosophical culture as conceived of in the Socratic-Popperian tradition.

Up to this point, I believe we may see that a philosophical culture is itself good insofar as practicing philosophy (the love of wisdom) is good in itself as well as for its providing a foundation for constitutional democracy. Even if there is no feasibility of a nation or kingdom becoming a constitutional democracy, a philosophical culture would still have value insofar as it supports citizens or subjects articulating their needs and preferences. A philosophical culture need not be seditious, but it could function as a vigilant, independent realm in which persons may publically reflect on the value of their nation's policies and practices. If you grant that all this is plausible, why think that this has any special implications for museums?

3. The Philosophical Culture Museum Model

So, to repeat the questions, if one does value philosophical culture, why think that this value pertains especially to museums? Why not consider the Philosophical Culture Model in terms of other institutions or contexts like libraries, public parks, the family, coffee houses, social media websites, hospitals, and so on? What is so special about museums?

As it happens, I think that all of the above domains should be approached with concern for their role in a philosophical culture which, in turn, serves as the basis for a constitutional democracy. There are, however, multiple reasons for considering museums in particular in terms of philosophical culture. Before outlining those reasons, I must ask you to consider a kind of museum that is quite different from many. A philosophical culture will not be realized at a museum site if museum-goers and professionals are not permitted to speak or share their views. A museum would be a site for a philosophical culture if it regularly and reliably provided exhibits that raised relevant questions about the well being of the state, matters of social and political significance such as exhibits that includes art work or artefacts that reveal acts or patterns of injustice. Museums might also contribute to a philosophical culture by provided educational aids for the philosophical exploration of religions, past empires and the lessons one might learn from their rise and fall. And museums may also contribute to philosophical culture by offering regular seminars and forums for philosophical reflections on works of art and the nature and significance of museums. I am not proposing that in order for a museum to be a site for a culture that supports a constitutional democracy, that the exhibits and acquisition of works should be determined by a democratic vote of the public at large. Most universities and colleges today throughout most, but not all, of the world equip students with the skills needed to participate in society and function democratically (at least 60% of countries today claim to be democratic), without having students vote on what topics are offered or how they are to be taught. Still, a good college or university, like a good museum in line with philosophical culture, should take seriously the needs and desires of those they serve and be open to students and museum goers when they offer their own views about topics, policies, and exhibits. The museum that supports philosophical culture would be similar to a school or college insofar as it provides forums for persons to learn and grow together in keeping with the museum's mission. So, for example, a museum dedicated to agriculture might include exhibits and places for reflection on farm policy, animal welfare, and waste-management when it comes to fertilizers and herbicides, and so on.

With such a museum in mind, why think that a museum should be singled out in any way as a special place for practicing and cultivating a democratic culture? Here are four reasons.

First, museums have played a pivotal role in most cultures where they have been established by helping to define a culture's identity, and to honour significant past and present events, artefacts, and other objects. In fact, it is because of their role in shaping cultural identity that museums have been criticized for promoting unjust causes. One of the first modern museums and one of the largest world museums today, the Louvre, was tasked at its founding with preserving the national memory of France. This memory was shaped by the Louvre's display of many works that were extracted throughout Europe by France's revolutionary armies. Such extraction without compensation amounted to theft. In the Napoleonic era, the museum was a kind of shrine to the glory of France. So, it is partly because of the powerful influence that museums have had, for good or ill, that they are natural institutions to focus on.

Second, museums are natural places where exploitive and unjust events of the past may be exposed and corrected. Let's go back to the example of the worst possible museum imaginable, Hitler's envisioned Führermuseum in Austria: this museum needs to be seen as perverse for the reasons mentioned earlier (its distorted values), but especially because of the plan to promote an outrageously false history. As the war turned against Germany, desperate means were employed to cover up the genocide and mass killings carried out by the SS and the army. If Hitler had won the war or gained a truce that left him with a vast empire and the museum was constructed to support a doctored history, it would have been a monumental, profane abomination. I believe there is much to be commended in Harold Rosenberg's essay on museums, ‘Reverence is All’, in which he wrote:

Third, while museums are not unique in this respect, they seem especially well placed to offer the public sites for philosophical culture in which access is not dependent on wealth. Some of the great museums of the world, such as the National Gallery in London and the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, do not charge entrance fees (at the Metropolitan, a donation is recommended but visitors can elect to make a token donation of little significance). In such contexts there is not the same stratification of persons according to wealth as one finds in restaurants or some forms of transportation, such as trains or planes. On some airlines you may pay to travel first class, business class, economy, premium economy, etc. But in the National Gallery and the Metropolitan Museum, those with hereditary, dynastic wealth cannot pay, for example, to get closer to a painting or object (such as the moon rock at the Smithsonian, which also has free admission) than a person who is dispossessed or under-employed.

Fourth, a historical argument should be considered. The museum's fittingness as a site for philosophical culture may be further advanced in light of how museums can play a similar role as the coffeehouse in eighteenth-century Britain and its North American colonies. These were sites for democratic discourse where public debate about politics and culture was common.Footnote ¹⁰ Perhaps the internet can take the place of the coffeehouse, but insofar as meeting in person is still an important facet of education, experiencing artefacts, and engaging in philosophical discourse, the museum seems poised to play a role analogous to the past, successful use of coffee houses two to three hundred years ago. Having made this analogy, it is important that we avoid romanticising the eighteenth-century coffeehouse, and learn from its limitations. While the coffeehouse was certainly a more democratic and public space for discussion and interaction than had existed previously in Europe and North America, access was limited by gender, income, ethnicity, and education. Historically, many museums in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries had similar barriers. Today, as noted earlier, the main world museums do not have any explicit conditions of exclusivity in terms of wealth, gender or ethnicity, and yet there is some reason to think that many museums are used more by those who are well educated and see themselves as full members of their societies, rather than those less educated who see themselves as marginal members, economically and socially. For this reason, one may well argue that the primary focus should be on a philosophy of public education for all persons, regardless of wealth, rather than a philosophy of museums.

In reply, I suggest that many museums today often dedicate considerable resources to childhood and adult education, and that past and present failures of museums to promote philosophical culture should not dissuade us from the need to pursue the Philosophical Culture Museum Model.Footnote ¹¹

In further filling out the PCMM and reaching, below, a formal characterisation of it, I borrow from some of the language that is typical in museology, all of which can be adjusted while maintaining the core point about the importance of a philosophical culture. So, in the account below, the museum is cast as a site for persons to explore, learn from, be inspired by, and enjoy exhibitions. These are all taken from the official UK Museums Association's definition of a museum, and for good reason.Footnote ¹² The notion of ‘exploration’ suggests that persons have some liberty in their museum experience; ‘learning’ points to an educational component; the idea of ‘inspiration’ harkens back to the etymology of the term ‘museum’ which comes from the Greek for the seat or temple of the muses (who are said to inspire poets and other artists). ‘Enjoy’ may not be the best term, given that museums in the context of a philosophical culture would include museums dedicated to remembering and learning from the Holocaust. But I am keeping the word because I think that most museums should include sites that persons may indeed enjoy. In the cases of museums memorialising and educating us about tragedy, the word ‘entertain’ might be more appropriate because ‘entertain’ does not necessarily involve pleasure; a museum may rightly be dedicated to persons entertaining (understanding, contemplating, grieving about) events that are horrifying or go beyond our individual experiences. In addition to these modest points, please recall that the PCMM is not a conceptual account of what we mean (or most of us mean) by the term or concept of being a museum. The following is, instead, offered as a stipulative or persuasive characterisation, insofar as it provides what is proposed to be a good role for museums. To stress its specificity, I offer this as a definition of a museum according to the PCMM:

The topics for public fora in a PCMM museum will differ according to the focus of the museum. Museums dedicated to the fine arts are likely to cultivate questions about aesthetics, creativity, originality, meaning, and history that will differ at least slightly from those questions cultivated by a museum dedicated to agricultural practices.

Another point to note: the above model does not employ the language of some museum mission statements that sharply distinguishes the museum and its visitors. I have left this matter open ended, but I suggest that a museum that is truly responsive to its surrounding population should regard ‘visitors’ as potential members, patrons, donors, or volunteers, providing ways in which persons in the region of a museum may come to see it as their own. I suggest that a sense of shared ownership or belonging to a museum would enhance its appeal as a safe place for the development of a philosophical culture.

Let us now consider the PCMM in light of some criticism of museums.

4. Objections to Museums

Consider first the objection to museums from the standpoint of American pragmatism. John Dewey developed an important account of aesthetic experience in his book Art as Experience.Footnote ¹³ For Dewey, the aesthetic consists in our finding valuable, affectively vivid unities in our experience. So, one may observe or be part of an argument on a ship, but it only becomes an aesthetic event when one experiences what took place as a kind of unified whole (and perhaps integrated with other events). The book begins with a chapter entitled ‘The Live Creatures’ in which he grounds the aesthetic in our sense of values and unity as a natural process, essential to living a life of sensations, desire, and purposes. The aesthetic occurs as part of our organic, physiological ‘experience in which the whole creature is alive’.Footnote ¹⁴ Out of this affirmation of the aesthetic throughout our lives, Dewey lamented the ways in which museums of fine art seem to move the aesthetic ‘to a separate realm’.Footnote ¹⁵ We wind up with what Dewey called ‘the museum conception of art’ and ‘the esoteric idea of fine art’ that overshadows natural, aesthetic art in ordinary life.Footnote ¹⁶ Dewey preferred instead not just the aesthetics of ordinary experience, but the so-called low or popular art from jazz to pop music.

Today, Richard Schusterman has continued Dewey's critique of the museum as setting up a stifling dualism that results in the depreciation of non-museum experience. This dualism harms both our appreciation of works of art themselves and our personal values:

Before seeking a reply to the pragmatist critique, consider Foucault's reservations about museums. Foucault contends that the museum plays a dangerous role in shaping what we take to be cultural knowledge. The muséal object is presented in an ostensibly objective format with accurate didactic texts offering us a neat guide to what we are experiencing. But while visitors may think that they are freely exploring an exhibit, in practice their experience is being subtly controlled by the position, lighting, and texts that accompany the objects. Most importantly, the museum creates an illusion of timelessness or a sense of the totality of history. Objects from remote time periods are placed in the same building and yet all of them appear to the museum visitor simultaneously or sequentially as she walks through the exhibits. Foucault uses the word ‘heterotopia’ (a utopia of many things) to refer to the museum's insatiable appetite and ability to endlessly collect objects from different times:

Much more might be presented from Foucault, Schusterman, and Dewey, but enough is on display to assess the PCMM in light of their objections.

The short answer to all three philosophers is that the PCMM would be an ideal setting for a forum to reflect on these critical observations. So long as each philosopher invites an open forum in which different arguments and ideas can all be given a hearing, it seems that each philosopher should support the model. In terms of a more specific reply, while museum practices in Dewey's time might advance an unhealthy dichotomy, it would be very hard to build a plausible case for such an analysis today in terms of the major world museums, east and west, and the vast number of more focused museums. Increasingly over the twentieth century, as artists grew more bold in employing everyday objects in their art (from images of Brillo, to pop art's use of comic graphics, to the use of urine, fecal material, blood and so on in ‘shock art’) it became harder to see these as amounting to a pleasant escape from the ordinary. In fact, when there are exhibits that contain (replica) babies’ heads covered in blood, photographs of artists committing bestiality with chickens (that they then kill), or an artist masturbating while sitting dangerously close to some lethally charged wires that will kill him if he is not careful, escaping to the non-museum world might seem like a relief. In any case, the Philosophical Culture Museum Model would invite reflection on the enduring value of all such performances and artefacts.

Another modest point needs to be noted in response to pragmatist objections: insofar as the PCMM is able to avoid charging admissions fees, the museum would be a more democratic forum than any number of ordinary, everyday events noted by Dewey and Schusterman. Usually it costs money to go to jazz clubs or to acquire pop art or music, whereas it may cost an individual nothing to enter the museum (except insofar as the individual is a taxpayer and the state sustains the museum, and so on).

The kind of control that Foucault worries about in terms of museums creating cultural knowledge would also (as noted) be an object for reflection in the museum as a site for the promotion of philosophical culture. In the earlier discussion of the role of a museum in articulating the past, the PCMM comes with an explicit commitment not to promote a false history. Of course, if one denies the possibility of grasping what took place in the past, this commitment will be cold comfort; but there are some matters only the most extreme, radical sceptic could deny, for example, that over six million persons were killed in the Holocaust. As for museums being unreal because they exhibit objects that are assumed to be in separate times (or the objects from different times create a false sense of simultaneity or presence), it is hard to see why such an objection might not be made against one's grandmother's collection of the notes you sent her at different times, or even a grocery store with goods that were harvested at different times. Foucault's overall position merits serious attention to the effect that museums in the past (and some now) enhance canonical pictures of history that absolve or airbrush out past crimes. Moreover, the so-called Enlightenment did offer a variety of ‘objective’ accounts of human development and progress that we can now readily see (looking back) as advancing the ‘power-politics’ of the past.

I propose that the PCMM can stand up to the above criticism. Moreover, insofar as you find value in a philosophical culture either for its own sake or because it is an important foundation for a constitutional democratic society (or both) or insofar as (in the absence of a constitutional democracy) the PCMM provides a forum for dissent and free discourse, you have reason for favouring the PCMM.

5. Some Further Thoughts on the Philosophy of Museums, Aesthetics, and Art

If the PCMM is adopted (that is, if some museums put it into practice), then many of the themes, questions, and arguments now classified as topics in aesthetics and the philosophy of art will come into play in the philosophy of museums. For example, all of the following concerns are relevant for reflection, and for the museum and its practices: what is a work of art? What is its relationship to time and space (how is a poem's location different from that of a sculpture?) What is the aesthetic? What is the meaning of a work of art? When is it appropriate to criticize a work of art for its ethical content? What is creativity? What is the imagination? What is wrong with a forgery of a work of art if no expert can tell that it is a forgery? When is a work of art unjustly acquired? When should it be returned to its rightful owners or representatives? When, if ever, should works of art be censored? What is the difference between pornography and erotic art? And the list goes on. Most important in light of recent publications, a philosophy of museums would also need to take seriously the debate over whether the philosophy of art is hampered by the assumption that artwork should be viewed aesthetically.

But, as suggested at the outset, some of the questions that arise in the philosophy of museums invite concerns that go beyond the traditional and current boundaries of aesthetics and the philosophy of art. For example, some of the recent work on social epistemology and democracy would be of great relevance.Footnote ¹⁹ This should not, however, be a melancholy affair. The emergence of the philosophy of museums should instead be the development of a sub-field of philosophy that could play an important role in museum studies and the practice of museology today.

In some respects, the reasons for recognising the sub-field of philosophy of museums resemble the reasons why the sub-field of environmental ethics emerged in the 1980s. Prior to environmental ethics becoming recognized as a field of its own, philosophers contributed work in multiple areas such as population growth, collective responsibility, the moral standing of non-human animals, pollution and accountability, property rights, and so on, without the benefit of realising institutionally that their work had a common character: they were all focusing on ethical issues that bear on our role in our environment. The reason for recognising environmental ethics as a field was not just a matter of classification; its recognition allowed philosophers to unite in promoting environmental awareness. Since the first Earth Day, there has been a significant environmental movement that seeks to rectify the ways we have damaged other living things. The classificatory boundaries of environmental ethics, or some other domain like business ethics, may not be obvious, but the field or sub-field is now fairly well established with journals like Environmental Ethics, conferences, institutions, and the like.

Unfortunately there has not yet been a first Museum Day that is akin to Earth Day, but there is now a growing focus on museums in the work of many philosophers. Recent books that seem to be ideal candidates for inclusion in such a field include Gary Edson's Museum Ethics (1997), Hilde Hein's The Museum in Transition (2000), and Hugh Genoways’ Museum Philosophy for the Twenty-first Century (2006).

There is also a good opportunity for philosophers to do work that will be of real significance to museum practices, and the establishment of a field would also provide a forum for the work of philosophically oriented museum professionals.Footnote ²⁰