Eileen John

My research concerns how art and creative practices broadly speaking engage us as cognitive and ethical 'works-in-progress'. I have a specific interest in literature and its philosophical and ethical roles. Issues I am currently working on include: how the exercise of aesthetic judgement contributes to status as a person, what we can have at stake in relation to fictional characters, and whether certain forms of humour have a morally interesting impact. Authors who are provoking some of this work include Thomas Hardy, Flannery O'Connor, Herman Melville, Nathaniel West, J. M. Coetzee, and Toni Morrison. I also have an ongoing interest in how to think about poetry and the range of experiential and intellectual demands it can place on readers.

Selected publications

'Love and the Need for Comprehension', forthcoming in Philosophical Explorations.
'Caring about Characters', forthcoming in Fictional Characters, Real Problems: The Search for Ethical Content in Literature, ed. Garry Hagberg.
'Art and Knowledge', in The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, 3rd ed., Berys Gaut and Dominic Lopes, eds. (Routledge, 2013). [replaces chapter in 2001 edition]
'Literature, Pluralism, and the Critique of Evaluative Concepts', in Understanding Fiction: Knowledge and Meaning in Literature, eds. Jürgen Daiber, Eva-Maria Konrad, Thomas Petraschka, and Hans Rott (Mentis, 2012).
'Beauty, Interest, and Autonomy', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 70 (2), 2012.
'Literature and the Idea of Morality', in A Companion to the Philosophy of Literature, eds. Garry Hagberg and Walter Jost (Blackwell, 2010).
'Poetry and Cognition', in A Sense of the World: Fiction, Narrative and Knowledge, eds. John Gibson, Wolfgang Huemer, and Luca Pocci (Routledge, 2007).
'Artistic Value and Opportunistic Moralism', in Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art, ed. Matthew Kieran (Blackwell, 2006).
Philosophy of Literature: Contemporary and Classic Readings, co-edited with Dominic Lopes (Blackwell, 2004).
'Literary Fiction and the Philosophical Value of Detail', in Imagination, Philosophy, and the Arts, eds. Matthew Kieran and Dominic Lopes (Routledge, 2003).
'Images of Community in American Popular Culture,' co-authored with Nancy Potter, in Diversity and Community, ed. Philip Alperson (Blackwell, 2002).
Reading Fiction and Conceptual Knowledge: Philosophical Thought in Literary Context, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56(4), 1998.
Henry James: Making Moral Life Interesting, Henry James Review 18, 1997.
'Subtlety and Moral Vision in Fiction', Philosophy and Literature 19, 1995.

Selected book reviews

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2012: review of J. M. Coetzee and Ethics: Philosophical Perspectives on Literature, eds. Anton Leist and Peter Singer
British Journal of Aesthetics 2009, 49(2): review of Art, Emotion and Ethics by Berys Gaut
Philosophy in Review 2009, XXIX(5): review of On Form: Poetry, Aestheticism and the Legacy of a Word by Angela Leighton
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2008: review of Aesthetics and Literature by David Davies
British Journal of Aesthetics 2007, 47(2): review of Aesthetics, Imagination and the Unity of Experience by R. K. Elliott
Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 2002, 60(2): review of Fiction and Metaphysics by Amie Thomasson