RESEARCH
RESEARCH STATEMENT
How should we think of our relationships with aesthetic objects? Are artworks simply objects that bring us pleasurable experiences? Or are our relationships more significant: Do we have ethical responsibilities towards these objects? How might they shape our practical identity? How might they put us in touch with other persons? A major through-line of my research is the notion that we can make progress on answering these kinds of questions by comparing our relationships with aesthetic objects with other normatively significant relationships—specifically with interpersonal relationships and commitments to personal ideals. As such, my research sits at the intersection of a number of different philosophical conversations, including ethics, metanormativity, aesthetics, and the philosophy of art.
PAPERS & BOOK CHAPTERS
(Forthcoming) Philosophers' Imprint. https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/phimp/article/id/3475/
The aesthetic domain is a social one. We coordinate our individual acts of creation, appreciation, and performance with those of others in the context of social aesthetic practices. More strongly, many of the richest goods of our aesthetic lives are constitutively social; their value lies in the fact that individuals are engaged in joint aesthetic agency, participating in cooperative and collaborative project that outstrips what can be realized alone. I provide an account of nature and value of two such social aesthetic goods—aesthetic communities and aesthetic traditions—and further argue that such goods are a core constituent of an aesthetically good life. At the same time, I argue that the ideals of the dominant theory of aesthetic value, aesthetic value hedonism, are incompatible with a full commitment to these social aesthetic goods; the hedonist is thereby alienated from the other participants within aesthetic communities and traditions. This sets up a dilemma for the hedonist: either the hedonist must bite the bullet, accepting that the theory leads to a problematic form of aesthetic alienation; or, we must reject the aesthetic value hedonism and adopt a different theory of aesthetic value which accommodates the value of social aesthetic goods. I argue that we should take the second horn of the dilemma. Penultimate draft available here.
(2022) Ergo: an Open Access Journal of Philosophy, 8 (38): 402-422. https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/ergo/article/id/2239/
Resolving to finish reading a novel, staying true to your punk style, or dedicating your life to an artistic project: these are examples of aesthetic commitments. I argue that such commitments are significant insofar as they help us secure a number of goods associated with managing the temporally extended nature of our aesthetic agency and our relationships with aesthetic objects and ends. At the same time, focusing on aesthetic commitments can give us a better grasp on the nature of aesthetic normativity; this is because, in making aesthetic commitments, we are capable of giving aesthetic concerns the weight of obligation. I argue that appealing to aesthetic commitments allows us to account for the existence of aesthetic obligations as well as their grounding. I conclude by arguing that, although the aesthetic domain is a domain of play and freedom of choice, there is nevertheless an important place in it for both aesthetic commitments and the aesthetic obligations they generate. Penultimate draft available here.
(2023) The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Art, ed. James Harold, Oxford University Press.
The omnipresence of the Internet in the twenty-first century has brought with it an explosion of new artistic mediums, including memes, viral videos, social media posts, and other distinctive manifestations of Internet culture. These new mediums are largely participatory, ephemeral, and even anonymous, yet they offer important new opportunities for artistic expression. This chapter highlights their ethical significance along three main dimensions: First, the chapter focuses on how the everyday aesthetic choices afforded by online curation, filters, and Internet “aesthetics” provide new opportunities for the expression and creation of individual identities. Second, the chapter surveys the ways that Internet memes and other participatory mediums contribute to the formation and expression of communities with shared values. Third, the chapter discusses ethical challenges associated with ownership and attribution of instances of these mediums: can anyone claim ownership of a meme? And what might such ownership consist in? Please contact me for a draft.
(2017) British Journal of Aesthetics, 57 (3): 299–317. https://doi.org/10.1093/aesthj/ayx016
Most recent discussions of reasons in art criticism focus on reasons that justify beliefs about the value of artworks. Reviving a long-neglected suggestion from Paul Ziff, I argue that we should focus instead on art-critical reasons that justify actions—namely, particular ways of engaging with artworks. I argue that a focus on practical rather than theoretical reasons yields an understanding of criticism that better fits with our intuitions about the value of reading art criticism, and which makes room for a nuanced distinction between criticism that aims at universality and criticism that is resolutely personal. Penultimate draft available here.
(2017) Estetika: The Central European Journal of Aesthetics. 54 (1): 85–101.
It is uncontroversial that our engagement with artworks is constrained by obligations; most commonly, these consist in obligations to other persons, such as artists, audiences, and owners of artworks. A more controversial claim is that we have genuine obligations to artworks themselves. I defend a qualified version of this claim. However, I argue that such obligations do not derive from the supposed moral rights of artworks – for no such rights exist. Rather, I argue that these obligations are instances of duties of love: obligations that one incurs in virtue of loving some object, be it a person or, in this case, an artwork.
(2018) The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 76 (4): 519-528. doi: 10.1111/jaac.12587
This paper focuses on the ethical responsibilities of artists using live animals in artworks. I explore the ways that encountering an animal in a gallery can restructure our relationships with animals more generally, and argue that sometimes incorporating an animal into an artwork can function as both an ethical and an artistic good. At the same time, I argue that many artists fail to realize such goods in using animals in their works—and thereby fail in their ethical responsibilities to the animals in question.The jumping-off point is the Guggenheim's 2017 animal rights fiasco; along the way, I discuss artworks featuring genetically modified rabbits, goldfish in blenders, and horses stabled in a gallery. The paper wraps up by comparing the value of encountering animals in a gallery to encountering them on the one hand in nature; and on the other hand in a zoo. Penultimate draft available here.
REVIEWS
(2021) Ethics, 132 (1): 269-274. doi: 10.1086/715293
(2021) Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 79 (2):261-264. doi: 10.1093/jaac/kpab007
(2017) The Philosophers' Magazine 79:117-118. doi: 10.5840/tpm201779122