"Treating Objects of Religion As Artworks: Some Ontological Questions" by Katharine Loevy (Pacific University)

A LITTLE MORE ABOUT IT

What changes when we stop seeing religious objects as works of art—and recognize them instead as material embodiments of divine power? Drawing on Arthur Danto and Hans Belting, this lecture explores the fundamental ontological differences between artworks and religious objects, and what we lose when we mistake one for the other. Since the publication of Hans Belting's monumental Likeness and Presence, art historians and philosophers of art have been made aware that many of the objects and images typically treated as art are in fact objects or images of religion, which is to say that they are material sites for the coming to presence of supernatural powers or divine beings. Rather than objects or images for aesthetic contemplation, in other words, objects of religion are intended to make present beings or forces that must be understood in terms of power, obligation, expectation, and accountability, and hence in relation to social rather than aesthetic categories. What follows is a comparative analysis of the ontology of works of art and objects of religion that draws primarily upon Arthur Danto's philosophy of art and Belting's theorizing of the object of religion. My efforts will be toward developing a nuanced description of the ontological difference between works of art and objects of religion, and to show what I think is happening at the level of ontology when objects of religion are mistakenly assimilated to the category of art. What I propose, therefore, is an ontology of the work of art and an ontology of the object of religion that allow us to recognize both their points of convergence and the precise sense in which they remain fundamentally distinct.

Source: Lewis & Clark College · Imported on Oct 21, 2026