Aesthetics for Birds

Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art for Everyone

January 2, 2014
by Aesthetics for Birds
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Interview with Philosopher-Poet Troy Jollimore

What follows is an interview with philosopher and poet Troy Jollimore. Troy is Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Chico. He is the author of Love’s Vision (Princeton University Press, 2011) and On Loyalty (Routledge, 2012) as well as over a dozen articles in journals including Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, and American Philosophical Quarterly. He is also the author of two collections of poetry: At Lake Scugog (2011) and Tom Thomson in Purgatory, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry in 2006. He is a former External Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center and is a 2013 Guggenheim Fellow. Aesthetics for Birds recently featured an interview with poet and critic David Orr, author of Beautiful and Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry. Much of David’s work as a critic aims at demystifying poetry for a modern audience. Of course, philosophical enquiry can be said likewise to aim at the demystification of its … Continue reading

September 16, 2013
by Aesthetics for Birds
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Interview with Philosopher-Artist Keith Lehrer (Arizona/Miami)

Keith Lehrer is the Regent’s Professor emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Arizona with an affiliation with the University of Miami (Florida). In addition to his numerous published articles in areas such as epistemology, free will, rational consensus, and Thomas Reid, Keith has also authored several books including Thomas Reid (1989), Theory of Knowledge (1990), and Self-Trust: A Study of Reason, Knowledge, and Autonomy (1997). Keith also has a research interest in aesthetics, with his most recent book being Art, Self and Knowledge (Oxford University Press, 2011), and can currently be found bridging the gap between theory and practice as an active painter and performance artist (the website for his paintings can be found here). It is truly an honor to have Keith as part of Aesthetics for Birds’ Philosopher-Artist series.

August 30, 2013
by Aesthetics for Birds
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Interview with Philosopher-Artist Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins

What follows is an interview of artist and philosopher Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins. Carrie is the Canada Research Chair & Associate Professor in Philosophy at University of British Columbia and the Quarter-Time Chair in Theoretical Philosophy and Professorial Fellow at the Northern Institute of Philosophy, University of Aberdeen. She has published over two dozen journal articles and book chapters on issues in epistemology, metaphysics, logic, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mathematics, and is the author of the 2008 book Grounding Concepts: An Empirical Basis for Arithmetical Knowledge(Oxford). As if this weren’t enough, Carrie also happens to be a talented vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and member of the musical group 21st Century Monads (website here) along with Syracuse philosophers Ben Bradley, Kris McDaniel, and Hille Paakkunainen. Most of The 21st Century Monads songs are about philosophy in some form or other—e.g., broad philosophical themes (“Death is Bad for a Cow”), philosophical positions (“There Ain’t No Gunk”), the profession of Philosophy (“My Paper Was Rejected Again”), and … Continue reading