British Society of Aesthetics/CRPLA Workshop

University of Warwick

6-7 June 2025

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 will include speakers from both departments, along with speakers chosen from a call for abstracts (cfa details below).

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.

Co-organisers: Keren Gorodeisky (Auburn) and Eileen John (Warwick)

Call for abstracts:

We invite abstracts for papers that will explore the notion of aesthetic community, via some of the workshop’s central questions or related ones.

The abstracts should be 500-1000 words in length, with a 30-minute presentation in view. Please submit two versions of your file, one fully anonymized (and identified as such in the file name) and one including your name and information about your academic affiliation and career stage. Send abstracts to resourceaesthcomm@warwick.ac.uk by Monday 10 March 2025. Decisions will be made by 7 April.

We especially encourage submissions from PhD and early-career researchers, and we welcome and encourage submissions from members of groups currently underrepresented in philosophy. Some speakers will participate as commentators; if your paper is not accepted for presentation, you may still be invited to speak as a commentator. We do not have funding to support attendance at the workshop, but PhD and ECR researchers whose papers are accepted will be urged to apply for travel funding directly from the BSA.