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Professor Diarmuid Costello has been awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2023-4) to work on his next book project, a collection of essays provisionally titled Spurs to Thought: Philosophical Engagements with Contemporary Art.

Professor Costello says: "The goal of this research is two-fold: to demonstrate the remarkable capacity of selected works of contemporary art to function as spurs to philosophical reflection, if approached in the right spirit; and, in so doing, to establish the value of what I call 鈥減hilosophical criticism鈥� as an alternative to currently dominant methodologies in the philosophy of art, whether analytic or continental. The project brings this method to bear on the kind of contemporary works that often elicit hostility or confusion, so as to make clear the challenge that such works may implicitly pose to our unreflective understanding of normative concepts we make use of every day".

Professor Costello's previous, recently completed monograph, Aesthetics after Modernism will appear in 2024 with Oxford University Press (NYC) in No毛l Carroll and Jesse Prinz鈥檚 鈥楾hinking Art鈥� series.

"Aesthetics after Modernism argues for the ongoing relevance of aesthetics to appreciating art after modernism. It aims to show that even the hardest of 鈥渉ard cases鈥� remain amenable to aesthetic analysis on an adequate conception of the latter. The book traces the contrary view of much recent art criticism and theory to Clement Greenberg鈥檚 success in recruiting Kant鈥檚 aesthetics to underwrite a formalist conception of aesthetic value. This has led later theorists to miss the resources in the third Critique for understanding our cognitive relation to the kinds of art in which they are interested. It is widely assumed that Kant鈥檚 aesthetics cannot speak to the semantic dimension of art; I provide an interpretation of Kant鈥檚 theory of art, taking Conceptual Art as my test case, that suggests otherwise. If it can be shown that Kant鈥檚 aesthetics can accommodate the appreciation of art with no sensible features, then it should in principle be able to accommodate any kind of art".

In this new monograph, Dr David James explores the theories of property developed by four key philosophers in the German philosophical tradition: Kant, Fichte, Hegel and Marx. While these philosophers advance different theories of the nature of property and the rights that follow from it, all of them acknowledge the importance of social recognition for the question of what specific forms of property should exist in a society that is genuinely committed to the idea of freedom.

The theme of property and ownership is closely linked to many divisive social and political issues of today. In this book, Dr James analyses the nature and meaning of property and arguments for specific forms of property in such a way as to demonstrate their continuing relevance.

Philosophy Undergraduate Kenneth Quek has had a paper published in the journal Logos, an undergraduate philosophy journal edited by Cornell University in the USA. Kenneth鈥檚 paper is called 鈥楩orgiveness: A Descriptive Analysis鈥�. Kenneth summarises it as follows:

 鈥淔orgiveness features as a huge part of our moral lives, but very little work has been done to figure out just what it is and what it accomplishes. My paper aims to describe what, on a fundamental level, is involved when one forgives someone else.鈥�

 The paper was awarded the Top Prize out of 91 submissions and was the product of Kenneth鈥檚 Undergraduate Research Support Scheme (URSS) project on Forgiveness undertaken with Professor Fabienne Peter in the summer of 2021. Congratulations to Kenneth on this noteworthy achievement. Read the issue here:

Keith Ansell-Pearson, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, has co-edited a new book with Paul S Loeb, Nietzsche鈥檚 鈥楾hus Spoke Zarathustra鈥� A Critical Guide, just published by Cambridge University Press. See here:

In 鈥楨cce Homo鈥�, Nietzsche writes that his book 鈥� Thus Spoke Zarathustra鈥� is the 鈥榞reatest gift鈥� humanity has ever received - the 鈥榤ost elevated book鈥� with a 鈥榲oice that spans over millennia鈥�. Despite this, anglophone Nietzsche scholars have been somewhat reluctant to engage with the work he took to be his true masterpiece. Nietzsche regarded 鈥楾hus Spoke Zarathustra鈥� as his most important philosophical contribution because it proposes solutions to the problems and questions he poses in his later books – for example, his cure for the human disposition to vengefulness and his creation of new values as the antidote to nihilism. It is also the only place where he elaborates his concepts of the superhuman and the eternal recurrence of the same. In this Critical Guide, an international group of distinguished scholars analyse the philosophical ideas in 鈥楾hus Spoke Zarathustra鈥�, discussing a range of topics that include literary parody as philosophical critique, philosophy as a way of life, the meaning of human life, philosophical naturalism, fatalism, radical flux, human passions and virtues, great politics, transhumanism, and ecological conscience. The volume will be invaluable for philosophers, scholas and students interested in Nietzsche鈥檚 thought.

Peter Poellner, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, has a new book published by Oxford University Press. In Value in Modernity, The Philosophy of Existential Modernism in Nietzsche, Scheler, Sartre, and Musil (OUP, April 2022), Professor Poellner presents an original and innovative reconstruction of a strand of philosophical modernism previously overlooked, and explores new interpretations of Nietzsche and Sartre and their ethical thought. Professor Poellner鈥檚 text also offers the first in depth interpretation in English of the philosophical centre of Musil鈥檚 The Man Without Qualities.