ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL ARCHAEOLOGY OF ART HISTORY

Given the different material on which art history as a scientific field has taken shape compared with other historical and philosophical disciplines, this study offers a new historiographical approach to understanding its origin. This approach is explored not in relation to gathering information about the figures and institutions of art history but as an epistemological foundation for understanding the concept of seeing as a deliberate tool of art history. The study argues that the act of seeing, as the archè of art history, can be defined as the philosophical archaeology recently proposed by Giorgio Agamben.