In this two-part recording, philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff talks with Jonathan Anderson about his new book Art Rethought (Oxford University Press, 2015) and the development of his thinking about the arts. Published more than three decades after his landmark book Art in Action (1980), Wolterstoff's new book seeks to deepen and expand his argument that artworks are meaningful not as objects in themselves but because of the ways they are embedded in social practices.
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Dr. Nicholas Wolterstorff is an American philosopher and currently the Noah Porter Emeritus Professor of Philosophical Theology at Yale University. A prolific writer with wide-ranging philosophical and theological interests, he has written books on aesthetics, epistemology, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and philosophy of education. In Faith and Rationality, Wolterstorff, Alvin Plantinga, and William Alston developed and expanded upon a view of religious epistemology that has come to be known as reformed epistemology. He also helped to establish the journal Faith and Philosophy and the Society of Christian Philosophers. Dr. Nicholas Wolterstorff regularly teaches lecture courses in philosophy of religion and aesthetics, and seminars in epistemology, hermeneutics, and philosophy of religion. Dr. Wolterstorff received his BA from Calvin College in 1953 and his PhD in philosophy from Harvard University in 1956. After concentrating on metaphysics at the beginning of his career (On Universals), he spent a good many years working primarily on aesthetics and philosophy of art (Works And Worlds Of Art and Art In Action). In more recent years, he has been concentrating on epistemology (John Locke And The Ethics Of Belief and the just published Thomas Reid And The Story Of Epistemology), on philosophy of religion (Divine Discourse and, with Alvin Plantinga, Faith And Rationality), and political philosophy (Until Justice And Peace Embrace and, with Robert Audi, Religion In The Public Square).
Jonathan Anderson has been teaching at Biola University since 2006. He holds an M.F.A. from California State University Long Beach, where he received the Distinguished Achievement Award in Drawing & Painting. He is an actively exhibiting artist, including exhibitions at the US Embassy in Wellington, New Zealand; Phantom Galleries in Long Beach, CA; the Museum of the Living Artist in San Diego, CA; George Fox University in Newberg, OR; and numerous other galleries around the country. Anderson’s work is heavily influenced by 20th-century philosophy and takes the figure/ground relationship in painting as his primary preoccupation. In addition, Professor Anderson is a regular speaker and writer about art, focusing especially on bringing contemporary art and Christian theology into more meaningful conversation with each other.