Critical Communities and Aesthetic Practices: Dialogues with Tony O'Connor on Society, Art, and Friendship

This publication brings together eminent international philosophers to discuss the inter-dependence of critical communities and aesthetic practices.

The contributions share a hermeneutical commitment to dialogue as both a model for critique and as a generator of community. Two conclusions emerge from this. First that one's relationships with others will always be central in determining the social, political, and artistic forms that philosophical self-reflection takes. And second that our practices of aesthetic judgment are bound up with our efforts as philosophers to adapt ourselves and our objects of interest to the inescapably historical and indeterminate conditions of experience.

The papers address the issue that critical communities and aesthetic practices are never politically neutral and can never be abstracted from their particular contexts. It is for this reason that the contributors investigate the politics (not of laws, parties and state constitutions) of open, undefinable critical communities such as audiences, peers and friends.

The publication is distinctive and unique in providing a current selection of prominent positions (written for this volume). The result is a pluralist collection that, while not homogenized, brings into focus contemporary debates on critical and aesthetic practices.