Aesthetics for Birds

Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art for Everyone

Tag Archives: class

September 5, 2019
by Aesthetics for Birds
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Artist-Philosopher Interview: Matt Lindauer

Musician and philosopher Matt Lindauer interviewed by Alex King Matt Lindauer is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. He specializes in moral and political philosophy, moral psychology, and experimental philosophy, and has published work in Philosophical Studies, Journal of Moral Philosophy, Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, and Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy, among other venues. He is also a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. His band Myrna recently released their debut EP on Kitty Wizard Records and a full-length release is coming soon. His solo project Utena also produced a recent album that was recorded almost entirely on his iPhone between Australia and Brooklyn. He also played in the banjo-key-drum group Sugarbat and in Daphne Lee Martin’s band as guitarist and banjo player, and has recorded a number of other projects. Some of his music was recently featured in an ad for Joe’s Jeans.

March 6, 2018
by Aesthetics for Birds
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In Defense of Country Music

What follows is a guest post by John Dyck (CUNY Graduate Center) I used to hate country music. I would hear it at my grandparents’ house. I remember hearing my grandma sing along to those drawling voices and crunchy fiddles. My nine-year-old self cringed inside. The music was so gauche and uncultured. My grandparents grew up poor and uneducated, and I could hear it in their music.

December 20, 2017
by Roy T Cook
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Punk Rock Philosophy #2: Nihilism or Activism?

I began this series of posts here, setting up the issues and summarizing Jesse Prinz’s main points in his groundbreaking “The Aesthetics of Punk Rock”. Readers of that post will recall that Prinz identifies three characteristics of punk rock that he thinks are central to the genre: Irreverence Nihilism Amateurism Readers of that post will also recall that I have nothing at this point to say about irreverence (of course, there likely is much to say about the exact sort of irreverence that is at work in punk rock, but I’m not going to do that today). Thus, we’ll move on to the second topic in the list: nihilism.

November 18, 2014
by Alex King
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High Art, Low Art, and the Status of Aesthetics

What follows is a guest post by Alex King (Buffalo). It’s a sad truth that aesthetics isn’t taken particularly seriously in the contemporary philosophical scene. And I think Bence Nanay is right to suggest that this is in part due to the perceived elitism of aesthetics. In this post, I’ll argue that we can make progress on this front by discussing an issue of independent philosophical interest: the distinction between high and low art and between so-called “highbrow” and “lowbrow” audiences. The moral, basically, will be this: Quit being so judgy.