Pierre Destrée (Université Catholique de Louvain): Aristotle on the Value of Art

Join us at 5:00pm for light refreshments.

When dealing with Aristotle valuing art, scholars typically  defend either a cognitivist or an ethical (or else, a cognitivist and ethical) reading of the Poetics, where Katharsis plays a central role. By contrast, Destrée defends an aesthetical reading of the Poetics which he infers from what Aristotle says about “music for leisure” in Politics 8, which is part and parcel of perfect happiness for all citizens.

Pierre Destrée is the author of numerous articles in Greek ethics and aesthetics. He has edited several books, including, most recently, Plato and the Poets (Brill, 2011), Plato and Myth (Brill, 2012), and the Cambridge Companion to Aristotle's Politics (2013). His Blackwell Companion to Ancient Aesthetics (co-edited with P. Murray) is forthcoming in 2014.