2025 Annual Conference Call for Papers: Beauty
27-29 March 2025 at Utah Valley University
Beauty has remained a major theme in the history of European-Western philosophy at least since the Greeks. Many non-Western traditions also feature their own complex treatments of beauty: Indian rasa aesthetics, Japanese wabi (“austere beauty”), Navajo hózhq (“beau- ty, perfection, harmony, order”), and so on. Indeed, the possible universality of beauty across cultures is itself a contentious issue. In professional philosophy, beauty’s fortunes have ebbed and flowed. It has been counted among the greatest values alongside truth and goodness, dismissed as frivolous, sidelined from discussions in aes- thetics, and charged with contributions to injustice (for example, in debates on unequal or racist or consumerist beauty standards). These variations on the theme sug- gest its malleability. Is beauty a timeless expression of harmony or a mode of perception conditioned by social and cultural norms? We welcome papers on beauty and its many iterations throughout the history of philosophy.
Keynotes: Massimiliano Tomba (University of California, Santa Cruz) + TBA
Send submissions as an email attachment to historyofphilosophysociety@gmail.com no later than January 6, 2025. Submissions should consist of the full paper (35 minutes of reading time, approx. 5000 words) prepared for anonymous review.