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United Kingdom

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7:00 PM-9:00 PM

Kant's Philosophy Today

Lecture|Session 3: Aesthetics and Contemporary Art

Kant's Philosophy Today © Goethe-Institut

Kant is considered one of the founders of aesthetics, the study of art. However, his central concepts, like beauty and disinterested contemplation, seem far removed from today’s conceptual and politicised art. Two experts will discuss whether and how Kant’s aesthetics can help us to engage with contemporary art.

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Chaired and curated by Stephen Howard (FRIAS, University of Freiburg)

In cooperation withThe Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Study, University of London
 

Diarmuid Costello is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick. His research focuses on aesthetics, philosophy of art, and art history and theory. His books include On Photography: A Philosophical Inquiry (Routledge, 2018) and a re-evaluation of Kant’s theory of art, Aesthetics after Modernism (Oxford University Press, 2024). He is currently working on philosophical approaches to contemporary art.

Fiona Hughes is Senior Lecturer in philosophy at the University of Essex. Her research interests include the relationship between Kants epistemology and aesthetics, Merleau-Ponty’s development of Husserl`s phenomenology, Nietzsche’s critique of the foundations of value, and the relationship between art and philosophy. She is the author of Kant’s Aesthetic Epistemology: Form and World (Edinburgh University Press, 2007) and Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgement: A Reader’s Guide (Continuum, 2009).
 

Clive Cazeaux is Professor of Aesthetics at Cardiff Metropolitan University, Wales, UK. He writes on the relation between art and philosophy, especially the way in which it is informed by ideas from Kant to phenomenology. Areas of interest within this include the philosophies of the senses, artistic research, and metaphor, with a focus on metaphor’s role in the way we carve up the world and think. Clive is the author ofArt, Research, Philosophy (Routledge 2017) andMetaphor and Continental Philosophy: From Kant to Derrida(Routledge 2007), and the editor of The Continental Aesthetics Reader (Routledge 2011, 2nd edition). He is currently writing a monograph on the philosophy of audio drama.


Stephen Howard is a senior postdoctoral fellow in philosophy at KU Leuven, Belgium, and, from October 2024, a fellow at FRIAS, Universität Freiburg, Germany. He specialises in early modern and modern European philosophy, taking a historical approach to issues in metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of science. He has recently developed an interest in the philosophy of climate change. His publications includeKant’s Late Philosophy of Nature: The Opus postumum(Cambridge University Press, 2023).