Maurice Goldsmith lecture: aesthetic responsibility
The attitudes and judgments we make of artists based on their artworks were discussed at this year's Maurice Goldsmith Public Lecture by a top visiting philosophy scholar from the United States. Susan Wolf is the Edna J. Koury Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina.
Her public lecture, titled ‘Aesthetic Responsibility’, explored whether judgments based on people’s moral qualities lead to overly narrow conceptions of responsibility and humanity. As a corrective, she suggests there is such a thing as aesthetic responsibility that is both similar to and different from moral responsibility.
The Maurice Goldsmith Lecture is an endowed public lecture hosted by Victoria University’s philosophy programme every one to two years and presented by an eminent philosopher working in ethics and/or political philosophy.