Nick Riggle

That shirt isn’t exactly giving ‘left wing nut’.

Can I vote?

Just wanted to share this wonderful news: The Lebowitz Prize went to aesthetics for the first time in its history. Congratulations to @domlopes.bsky.social and Samantha! I can't wait to see what they do together!

www.pbk.org/2025-lebowit...

I can swim like a grasfl dolphin can you? by my daughter Kate at age six

The Awesomeness of Bad Art

I love bad art.

Gather some friends and create some bad music. Cruise in a car covered with graffiti doodles. Hand a five-year-old crayons and free time and see what weirdness emerges.

Something worth celebrating happens. Although the art is "bad" in one sense -- 1/

You’re reading so many great books!!

I'm lucky to have them as philosophy-buds, even though they're wrong. And there's more work to do!

A highlight of last year was getting to talk with them about these issues, once in NYC and again in Sweden. I have learned a lot from them and our discussions have been, for me, ideal philosophy: fun, challenging, friendly, respectful, insightful, and productive.

Nick Riggle, Can’t Kill the Vibe: Against Hope in Aesthetic Discourse - PhilPapers In a recent paper, Nat Hansen and Zed Adams argue for an aesthetic discourse governing principle they call Hope. Inspired by the work of Stanley Cavell, they argue that when we ...

New paper forthcoming in Mind--my response to Nat Hansen @nathansen.bsky.social and Zed Adams's paper on aesthetic discourse (“The Hope of Agreement: Against Vibing Accounts of Aesthetic Judgment," Mind, 2023).

philpapers.org/rec/RIGCKT?f...

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Also I got to meet Karen Stohr and Will Fleisher! You’re lucky to have such great philosophers as colleagues!!

It was great. Sympathetic and thoughtful comments from Jonathan Fine and Jamie Ryerson and a really fun discussion. Afterward, we went out to lunch with Ryerson and he told us more about Sydney Morgenbesser than I knew was possible.

Hats off to Alex for organizing an excellent conference!!

I'm sure I'm missing some, but where are the American biographers here?

and (a highly recommended favorite) Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne. There is one exception, which is Hugh Eakin's incredible account John Quinn's influential collection of early Modernist paintings and the founding of the MoMA. 2/3

What's up with the British monopoly on really good intellectual biography? All of the recent ones I've loved are by British authors: I Am Dynamite!, Metaphysical Animals (ok, Clare Mac Cumhaill is Irish but educated in Scotland and working in England), Parfit, The Murder of Professor Schlick ... 1/3

sunrise over snowy rivers in Sweden

sunrise over Sweden

The 50 Top Rappers Of All Time Discover the greatest rappers of all time, celebrating the iconic voices and lyrical prowess that have shaped hip-hop's rich history.

I’m having way too much fun working on aesthetic ranking at the moment. This has to be the worst high-profile ranking I’ve come across—just diabolical putting Jay-Z at #1, Lil Wayne over Tupac, Drake over Eminem?! What are some other bad lists??

cold and dark and lit with ideas

@strohltopia.bsky.social’s new book too—Hard to Watch. Also @ksetiya.bsky.social’s Life is Hard.

WANTED: a list of philosophy or philosophy adjacent books that make good gifts to interested non-philosophers. #philsky

Man ran 700 miles to make ‘insanely impressive’ art on GPS fitness app It took Duncan McCabe 10 months to make a 27-second digital art video.

Street art??

There are 26 of the 78 Caravaggios sitting in random churches throughout the city. Find them. Also the Pantheon is unbelievable, one the most beautiful human-made spaces I’ve ever experienced.

Aesthetic sensitivity | 13 | Origin and development | Ana Clemente | T Aesthetic sensitivity is a core idea in empirical aesthetics, which refers to the study of the causes of individual variation in aesthetic appreciation.

Yeah I was thinking of Either/Or. I wish I had more to offer! I wonder if this paper is useful, if only for its bibliography: www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edi...

Well, first you love beautiful bodies and beget beautiful ideas there and then…jk jk—Schiller’s Letters is one classic source. Kierkegaard too. But there’s also a book called The Discipline of Taste and Feeling by Charles Wegener. There’s more on developing gustatory taste. Lmk if you find any gems!

I have added quite a few people to my philosophy starter pack
If we were mutuals on the other place or if we are mutuals here and you'd like to be added let me know!
go.bsky.app/8Qvnsgb

"The aesthetics of hardcore, skramz, and metal are surprisingly neglected, except by ME."

How's the book coming along?!

"Topic x is surprisingly neglected" is the grownup version of "for millennia philosophers have debated...".

starter pack for aesthetics!!

rather than come off as an enemy-in-waiting, Strohl always reads as the filmmaker's best friend, the one who can be trusted to craft an interpretation that lights the film up. It's deeply generous and rewarding criticism. Hard to Watch is worth it just for his take on Titane. 3/3

his power as a critic is instead in his ability to value film far more deeply, profoundly, and sympathetically than others, and to draw us in to the intense and loving attention he pays to films through his lucid and mercifully jargon-free writing. One consequences of this approach is that, 2/3