George Dickie is a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at University of Illinois at Chicago

University of Illinois at Chicago

The University of Illinois at Chicago, or UIC, is a state-funded public research university located in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, near the Chicago Loop...

 and is an influential philosopher of art working in the analytical tradition. His institutional theory of art

Institutional theory of art

The institutional theory of art is a theory about the nature of art that holds that an object can only be art in the context of the institution known as "the artworld"....

 inspired both supporters who produced variations on the theory as well as detractors.

One of his more influential works is "The Century of Taste," an inquiry into several eighteenth-century philosophers' treatments of the subject. The bulk of the work is devoted to championing, in a most forthright way, Hume

David Hume

David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...

's treatment of the subject over that of Kant

KANT

KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...

. A review of the work can be found in The Philosophical Review, 107:3 (July, 1998).