What is Aesthetic Injustice? A lecture by Dominic McIver Lopes

(University of British Columbia, Canada)

Thursday 12 September 2024 at 3 pm
Kampus Hybernská – Hall A3 (building A, 3rd floor)
Hybernská 4, Prague 1

Aesthetic activities may spring from and perpetuate racist, sexist, and elitist social arrangements, thereby serving as instruments of social injustice. Aesthetic injustice, by contrast, harms people in their capacities as aesthetic agents, particularly those capacities that support the crucial interests in the diversity and autonomy of aesthetic cultures. In his lecture, Dominic McIver Lopes will detail these two key interests and consider their role in our aesthetic lives.

Dominic McIver Lopes is a philosopher based at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He is the author or co-author of many books on depiction, the philosophy of art, and everyday aesthetics. In his book A Philosophy of Computer Art (Routledge 2009), he proposes a way to define and evaluate computer art. In Beyond Art (OUP 2014), he critiques the debate over what defines art and suggests a new approach to dealing with borderline works. In Being for Beauty: Aesthetic Agency and Value (OUP 2018), he challenges the traditional connection between beauty and pleasure, highlighting the significance of the aesthetic in an active life. This year, along with Samantha Matherne, Mohan Matthen, and Bence Nanay, he published The Geography of Taste (OUP 2024), in which he posits the plurality of taste and cultural diversity as the starting point for aesthetics. He continues to explore the value of diverse aesthetic cultures and the consequences of neglecting them in his latest book, Aesthetic Injustice, which will be published this fall by Oxford University Press.

The lecture was organized by the Department of Aesthetics of the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in collaboration with Are | are-events.org as part of the project Woods and supported by the Faculty of Arts, Charles University; the European Union – Next Generation EU, the Czech Recovery Plan, the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic; the State Cultural Fund of the Czech Republic; and the City of Prague. Special thanks to the Emblem Prague Hotel.