The editors of ‘Debates in Aesthetics’ are pleased to invite submissions for the 2026 General Issue (Vol.21, No. 1).

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: 9th January 2026

For this issue we welcome original articles, book reviews, and interviews on any topic in philosophy of art or aesthetics. Submissions should be accessible and concise – around 3,000-3,500 words for articles and around 1,000-1,500 words for book reviews. Proposals for interviews should be no more than 500 words, with the length of the final interview being 3’000-3’500 words. All submissions should be anonymised for blind review and in Word Document Format (.docx). Detailed submission guidelines are available on our website.

Articles

3,000-3,500 words

The journal publishes articles on a wide range of topics, from defining satire to photography, musical expression, feminism, fictional truth, aesthetic realism, or expressive qualities in animals, and more… For this issue we welcome work on any topic from philosophical aesthetics.

Interviews

500 word proposal (final interview should be 3,000-3,500 words)

Sometimes the finest philosophical discussion happens in conversation. The journal has published some excellent interviews with philosophers and artists alike, including Angela Leighton, Noël Carroll, Alexander Nehamas, Dominic McIver Lopes, and Santiago Sierra. If you are interested in conducting an interview for the journal, please submit a short proposal of no more than 500 words detailing who you intend to interview, why you think an interview with that person would be of interest to the readership of Debates in Aesthetics, and the relevance of the interviewee’s work to philosophical aesthetics. We especially encourage proposals for interviews with philosophers and artists from underrepresented groups.

Book Reviews

1,000-1,500 words

The journal also welcomes book reviews or critical summaries on books relevant to our field. These should be on a recent publication, and around 1,000-1,500 words. If you would like to review a book, it might be worth looking at publisher’s websites, such as Oxford University Press or Routledge, for new and upcoming releases in aesthetics.

Please email all submissions to editor@debatesinaesthetics.org

For submission guidelines please visit 

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Debates in Aesthetics is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal for articles, interviews and book reviews. Published by the ������Ƶ, the journal’s principal aim is to provide the philosophical community with a dedicated venue for debate in aesthetics and the philosophy of art.

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Christopher Earley & Ben Campion

Co-Editors 

Debates in Aesthetics

Supported by the and the ������Ƶ

Keynote Speakers: Prof. Hanne Appelqvist (University of Helsinki), Prof. Severin Schroeder (University of Reading)

Calling for abstracts of up to 1000 words, suitable for a 40-minute presentation, followed by twenty minutes of Q&A. We welcome submissions from people at all career stages, but especially encourage them from early career researchers.

There will be five slots for submitted papers.

Important updates and information about the event can be found at:

Workshop Rubric:

It is well known that Wittgenstein was inspired by Schopenhauer; a small tradition in the literature already discusses a number of notable commonalities and developments between the two thinkers. Yet, much of this literature is dated, and there remain many regrettably overlooked connections between these historical giants. In particular, many such connections lie between their multifaceted engagements with questions of value – with ethics and aesthetics.

The workshop aims to bring together leading scholars and emerging researchers to spark new discussions on Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein’s views on ethics and aesthetics—thereby uncovering new connections between the two. We seek to platform talks on intriguing and underexplored aspects of Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein’s thinking on value, including (but by no means limited to):

• The ethical and aesthetic dimensions of their shared fascination with the transcendental
• The notion of seeing the world sub specie aeternitatis (from the perspective of eternity)
• Schopenhauer’s presentation of aesthetic contemplation, and its resonance in Wittgenstein
• The respective roles played by meaning (Bedeutung) in our engagements with value
• The impression of mysticism in Wittgenstein’s philosophy and its ancestry in Schopenhauer’s work
• The role of the willing subject in both thinkers’ accounts of action and ethics, and in their broader philosophical frameworks

Abstracts discussing the work of both thinkers are especially desirable, but this is NOT a strict requirement. Talks discussing the views of either thinker on any topic in aesthetics/ethics are very welcome.

Submission:

Please submit your abstract, prepared for blind review, to philfos@soton.ac.uk by 1st October 2025. Please use “EASW Abstract Submission” as the subject line, and mention in the body of the email whether you are an early career researcher (understood to mean no more than four years beyond the completion of a PhD).

If you are interested in attending the workshop, please email the organisers (djk1g21@soton.ac.uk) to be sent a registration form. This should be completed and returned before 5th December 2025.

Financial Provision:

Overnight accommodation will be provided to all speakers – further financial contributions toward speakers’ travel expenses may also be available, distributed with a priority to those most in need. (Eligible speakers are also strongly encouraged to apply to the ������Ƶ for help financing travel: /portfolio/travel-stipends/).

There are also funds available to support childcare needs. Please contact us as soon as possible to arrange this or other accessibility requirements, in order to ensure we can guarantee every possible provision. For further details regarding accessibility, see the workshop website at:

Organisers: Dominic Kearney, Cheuk Hei Leung, and Dr. Simone Nota

Aesth-L is a platform for scholars and artists working on aesthetics and the arts, from all disciplines and approaches, to share news and initiatives with one another. We invite you—and any students or colleagues who may be interested—to join for free here: https://liste.unige.it/wws/info/aesth-l

Once subscribed, you will be able to send and receive messages to the list. Please review the posting rules on the list’s homepage before sharing messages. We look forward to welcoming you to the Aesth-L community!

The Aesth-L Team

Venue: Churchill College, Cambridge

Date: 10^th and 11^th July 2025

Keynote speakers: Lisa Giombini, Roma Tre; Helen Frowe, Stockholm University; Zoltán Somhegyi, Károli Gáspár University; Salvador Muñoz Viñas, University of Valencia

Deadline for papers: 1^st January 2025

Submissions of papers of up to 5200 words (about 40 minutes reading time) are invited on the topic of aesthetics and the management of heritage. The topic of how to ‘treat’ heritage (decisions about conservation, restoration, or reconstruction) is currently the subject of heated debate. At least some of the principles underlying these decisions are aesthetic; the history of the discussion, going back to the Renaissance, features work from thinkers and practitioners such as Petrarch, Alberti, Viollet-le-Duc, Morris, Ruskin, and Riegl. The principles that underlie how to treat heritage attempt to balance the preservation of values, many of which are central to aesthetics. In addition, the recent shift from ‘object-centred’ approaches to ‘people-centred’ approaches mirrors contemporary work in aesthetics on the nature of aesthetic properties.

The organisers invite papers on a broad range of topics in philosophy, art history, heritage studies, and cognate disciplines. They particularly invite speakers from groups traditionally underrepresented in higher education and on topics outside the heritage mainstream. The organisers hope to organise a publication (an edited collection, a journal special issue, or a journal symposium) so please indicate whether you would be willing to have your submission considered for this.

All submissions should be sent by email attachment to Derek Matravers (derek.matravers@open.ac.uk) and Zoltán Somhegyi (zoltansomhegyi@yahoo.co.uk). Enquiries should be directed at the same two people.

Beauty and taste are central concepts within aesthetics. There has been an upsurge of interest in returning to both concepts and considering how they feature in not just our engagements with the arts, but also in our aesthetic appreciation of everyday artefacts and activities, natural and built environments, bodies, moral character, and intellectual pursuits (Mothersill, 1984; Scarry, 1999; Nehamas, 2007; Parsons and Carlson, 2008; Scruton, 2009; Lopes, 2018; Riggle, 2022). However, even with increasing interest, concerns continue to surface regarding the relationships between judgements of beauty and other kinds of aesthetic judgements, whether pursuing beauty should have any privileged role in the development of taste in our aesthetic lives, and how exactly beauty interacts with pursuing goodness, knowledge, and justice.

This special issue aims to advance our contemporary understanding of the concepts of beauty and taste. We have welcomed Dr Panos Paris (Cardiff University) to contribute a target article, ‘Which Beauty? What Taste? Reflections on the Importance of the Philosophy of Beauty and Taste’. We are inviting short articles of two kinds. First, we invite articles that respond directly to the arguments raised in Dr Paris’ article. Second, we also invite articles that relate more broadly to the topics of beauty and taste.

All submissions must be short essays of no longer than 3,500 words (excluding footnotes and bibliography) and should be emailed to editor@debatesinaesthetics.org������ April 29^th 2024. For full submission guidelines see: .

Abstract for ‘Which Beauty? What Taste? Reflections on the Importance of the Philosophy of Beauty and Taste’:

In this paper, I reflect on the importance of the traditional conceptual pair of beauty and taste. Despite recent proclamations within philosophy that beauty is making a comeback, the concept still provokes confusion. I trace such confusion in part to philosophers’ increasingly thinking of beauty, in the so-called narrow, common-sense way, as an essentially shallow and thin concept. However, in stark contrast to most philosophers today, I observe that the notion of beauty in the narrow sense is the concept that allowed philosophers in the past––not unlike many laypersons today––to see beauty as linked to our most fundamental values, and so to speak of beauty of intellect, moral beauty, or the beauty of theorems, as well as artistic and natural beauty. And it is this understanding of beauty that was seen as a fundamental component of a flourishing life. Thus, to think of beauty as shallow and thin is thus not just undesirable, but evinces an impoverished outlook on both aesthetics and value more generally.

I begin by giving some background on beauty’s alleged comeback in recent philosophy. I then proceed to note that in recent years this comeback has concentrated on aesthetic value rather than beauty, which is often dismissed as less important. I suggest that this is at least partly due to an association between, or a running together of, three distinctions: between a narrow and a broad sense of beauty; between beauty as a thin and a thick concept; and between beauty that is easy, sensuous, and shallow on the one hand, and deep, profound, and meaningful, on the other. I argue that useful as these distinctions may be, they are unrelated to one another. Importantly, there is a distinct concept of beauty in the narrow sense that is both thick and not easy or shallow, that is inextricably tied to form, pleasure, and (non-aesthetic) value. However, whether or not an alleged instance of beauty, or indeed a person’s or group’s conceptions and experiences of beauty are easy and shallow or profound and meaningful, turns on another recently disparaged, yet central concept: taste. If we wish to better understand and promote the profound, meaningful, and enlightening varieties of beauty, then we should ensure that the conceptual pair of beauty and taste stand at the forefront of our philosophical enquiries.

The full paper can be downloaded here: 

Debates in Aesthetics is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal for articles, interviews and book reviews. Published by the ������Ƶ, the journal’s principal aim is to provide the philosophical community with a dedicated venue for debate in aesthetics and the philosophy of art.

Please visit  for more information, or feel free to email us at editor@debatesinaesthetics.org.

The season comprises four events, a film screening, an online curators’ discussion, an early careers research symposium and a conference. They are accepting proposals for papers for the two latter events.

Early Career Symposium

Modern Sculpture, Essence and Difference: Reflections on the Work of Constantin Brâncuşi
26 April 2024, Courtauld Institute of Art, London

Call for papers deadline (250-word abstract and 100-word bio): 15 January 2024, 17:00. 
Successful candidates are to be notified by 9 February. 
£100 honorarium + UK travel and accommodation expenses provided.

The early career symposium will include an artist in conversation on Brâncuşi between Lucy Skaer  and Hannah Hughes  chaired by Dr Rosalind McEver, Curator of Paintings and Drawings at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Further information at 

Conference

Brâncuşi, Britain and the Idea of Modern Sculpture
27 June 2024, Henry Moore Studios and Gardens, Perry Green, Hertfordshire

Call for papers deadline (250-word abstract, 100-word bio): 1st March 2024, 17:00.
Successful candidates are to be notified by 25 March.
£100 honorarium + UK travel and accommodation expenses provided.

Further information at 

In the last few years, a remarkable convergence of interests and results has emerged between scholars interested in the arts and aesthetics from a variety of perspectives and cognitive scientists studying the mind and brain within the Predictive Processing framework. The result is a vast and fast-growing research programme that promises to deliver important insights into our aesthetic behaviours as well as a wide range of psychological phenomena of general interest, including perception, cognition, learning, attention, curiosity, affect, motivation, well-being, and the dynamics of sub-personal and person-level experience. This theme issue provides a timely synthesis of this ambitious research programme, laying down a framework within which aesthetics and cognitive science can partner up to illuminate crucial aspects of the human mind.

Most of the papers (including the ) are available open access at: .

The dates for the 2024 meetings are 15^th to 19^th April, and the conference directors are David Davies (McGill), Jason Gaiger (Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford), Bozidar Kante (Maribor), Anna Pakes (Roehampton), and Iris Vidmar (Rijeka). The organisers welcome proposals for presentations ranging across the full range of issues in the philosophy of art and aesthetics. On the middle day of the conference (17^th April), there will be presentations on a selected theme with invited participants.

The conference runs along similar lines to the Dubrovnik Philosophy of Science Conference also held in April each year. This means that the organisers shall not be asking those wishing to attend for copies of their papers in advance, but do ask for a title and a brief abstract by March 15^th at the latest, and earlier if possible. They will notify all those who provide abstracts and titles as to whether their proposals have been accepted within a couple of days of that deadline, and earlier in the case of submissions received before the deadline. They can also provide, if requested, formal letters of invitation for those whose submissions have been accepted – these may be helpful in obtaining funding from institutions or granting agencies.

A draft of the programme will be circulated to participants in the weeks prior to the conference, allowing for adjustments to be made if necessary to accommodate the schedules of those arriving late or departing early. There will be five or six hour-long sessions each day, with a lengthy lunch break (3 hours) to allow participants to continue their discussions at a restaurant or other place of hostelry in the Old Town, or to explore the city. Presentations in regular sessions should be no longer than 40 minutes. Graduate students and those wishing to present shorter papers can give 20 minute presentations, with two such events taking up a single one-hour slot in the programme.

The organisers are unfortunately not able to pay any expenses for participants, but hope this will not prove too much of a discouragement. Participants should be able to obtain reasonable accommodation at hotels frequented by other participants at IUC conferences – details can be provided to those interested. Apartment accommodation in the Old Town is also available at a very reasonable cost. There will be a small conference fee (around 50 Euros, waived for students) in order to cover our obligations to the IUC for the use of the conference centre.

If you are interested in participating in the conference, please send a title and a brief abstract to David Davies at david.davies@mcgill.ca by March 15^th 2024 at the latest. For further information, or if you are interested in attending, but not presenting at, the conference, please also contact David Davies at the same e-address.

Conference fee is €40 for students and unwaged, and €80 for academics.

The confirmed keynote speakers are:
Hans Maes ()
Tone Roald ()
Stefano Velotti ()

Call for Abstracts
We invite papers from all traditions and on any topic in philosophical aesthetics. Both systematic and historical presentations are acceptable. For each talk, there will be time for a 20–25-minute presentation, with about another 20 minutes designated for discussion. All papers presented at the conference are eligible for publication in the .

Submissions must be in the form of a paper outline (800-1200 words in length) presenting not only the main ideas and claims of the paper, but also the arguments in favour of them, accompanied by a short abstract (max 300 words). We encourage the presentation of submissions in English, but submissions in other major European languages will be considered equally. Full paper submissions will not be accepted, and submissions are limited to one per person. Please, do not exceed the word limit.

Please use the PDF-file format for submission and render your text completely anonymous to allow for blind refereeing, i.e., the names of participants should not be revealed in the proposal or in the PDF-file’s metadata. To submit your paper outline (together with a short abstract), please use the(first-time users will be asked to register with EasyChair). The deadline for submissions is 15th January 2024. We aim to inform you about the result of our selection process by the end of February.

The 2024 Fabian Dorsch ESA Essay Prize Contest Announced
The European Society for Aesthetics awards an essay prize for PhD students and early career scholars (max. three years from the doctorate) in connection with its yearly conference. Former winners of the prize are not eligible to participate. The prize consists of a stipend of 500€. The winning essay will be considered for publication in the journal .

All submissions to the prize must be in English. The selection of the prize winner is in two stages. First, submissions are made by following the general call of the ESA 2024 conference. Please check the corresponding box in the EasyChair submission form to enter the essay prize contest. After the first round of reviews, selected authors are asked to submit a full conference paper (max. 5000 words, including bibliography and footnotes) by April 15th, 2024. The recipient of the prize is selected from this group. We aim to announce the winner by May 8th, 2024.

Additionally to selecting the winning paper, the ESA Essay Prize Committee shortlists up to two more essays out of those who are invited to submit their full conference paper. For each of the shortlisted essays (including the winning one), a commentary by a conference keynote speaker or an invited scholar will be provided before the conference. The essays, invited comments, and author’s replies will be presented in special sessions at the conference.

To subscribe to the ESA Newsletter, please fill in the ESA membership . 

The direct link to the latest Newsletter is .

Questions to be covered include whether conscious experiences are legitimate objects of aesthetic appreciation, whether conscious experiences can be beautiful, compelling, or otherwise aesthetically valuable, and whether consciousness as such might be somehow aesthetically valuable. The conference will feature invited talks by Robert Hopkins, Elisabeth Schellenkens, and Enrico Terrone. We have free slots for four more talks, to be selected from submissions.

Please submit an abstract of 500-750 words to theuriah@gmail.com������ Dec. 18, with the subject line “aesthetics of consciousness submission”.  

The conference is paired with a twin conference on the “ethics of consciousness,” to be held in the same venue on 10-11 April. Participants would be welcome to attend both conferences if they wish.