In loss humanity has often turned to aesthetic practices. Human beings have discovered that when loss has undermined normalcy and rendered those experiencing it dysfunctional, aesthetic practices can help us to cope and recover. Focusing on grief occasioned by the death of a loved one, the book considers the extent to which aesthetic practices can be beneficial in grief and some of the mechanisms involved. It directs particular attention to everyday aesthetic practices that are useful to grieving people, suggesting that the aesthetic side of everyday life is important not only for enhancing ordinary experience, but also for enabling us to deal with the disruptions that challenge our ability to find meaning in life.
In this event, Kathleen Higgins and Kate Warlow-Corcoran will reflect on the ways aesthetics aids people experiencing loss. Some practices related to bereavement, such as funerals, are scripted, but many others are recursive, improvisational, mundane — telling stories, listening to music, and reflecting on art or literature. These grounding, aesthetic practices can ease the disorienting effects of loss, shedding new light on the importance of aesthetics for personal and communal flourishing.
About the Speaker:
Kathleen Higgins is Professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. Her main areas of research are continental philosophy, philosophy of the emotions, and aesthetics, particularly musical aesthetics. She has published a number of books: Nietzsche's Zarathustra (2nd ed. 2010); The Music of Our Lives (rev. ed. 2011); A Short History of Philosophy (with Robert C. Solomon, 1996); Comic Relief: Nietzsche's “Gay Science” (Oxford University Press, 2000); What Nietzsche Really Said (2000); and The Music between Us: Is Music a Universal Language? (University of Chicago Press, 2012), which received the American Society for Aesthetics Outstanding Monograph Prize for 2012.
She has edited or co-edited several other books on such topics as Nietzsche, German Idealism, aesthetics, ethics, erotic love, non-Western philosophy, and the philosophy of Robert C. Solomon. Her last book, Aesthetics in Grief and Mourning: Philosophical Reflections on Coping with Loss, was published by The University of Chicago Press in 2024.
The Moderator:
Kate Warlow-Corcoran is a UK-based philosopher interested in 19th and 20th Century European philosophy (particularly the work of Theodor Adorno) and contemporary philosophy of mind. She recently completed an MRes in Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London.
This is an online conversation and audience Q&A presented by the UK-based journal The Philosopher. The event is free, open to the public, and held on Zoom.
You can register for this Monday 1st December event (11am PT/2pm ET/7pm UK) via The Philosopher here (link).
#Philosophy #Aesthetics #Ethics #Psychology
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About The Philosopher (https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/):
The Philosopher is the longest-running public philosophy journal in the UK (founded in 1923). It is published by the The Philosophical Society of England (http://www.philsoceng.uk/), a registered charity founded ten years earlier than the journal in 1913, and still running regular groups, workshops, and conferences around the UK. As of 2018, The Philosopher is edited by Newcastle-based philosopher Anthony Morgan and is published quarterly, both in print and digitally.
The journal aims to represent contemporary philosophy in all its many and constantly evolving forms, both within academia and beyond. Contributors over the years have ranged from John Dewey and G.K. Chesterton to contemporary thinkers like Christine Korsgaard, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Elizabeth Anderson, Martin Hägglund, Cary Wolfe, Avital Ronell, and Adam Kotsko.