James Lewis: Interpersonal valuing and tactile experience

Tuesday November 19 2024 @11:30 (CEST)
Sala B, Edificio de Humanidades, UNED & online

Abstract
In this paper I turn to an often-overlooked form of aesthetic experience: interpersonal touch. I argue that some of the paradigm forms of interpersonal touch in personal relationships ought to be thought of as sites of aesthetic experience, in which parties appreciate one another’s characters through bodily interaction. This argument provides resistance to a debunking analysis of interpersonal touch according to which whatever warm feelings arise from tactile interactions are never anything more than automatic evolved dispositions to bond with others via physical contact. A key point in the argument is to show that there is no dichotomy between a person’s character and their body.

Bio
James Lewis is a Lecturer in philosophy at Cardiff University. His philosophical work is mostly about interpersonal relations. Through this thematic lens, he engages with topics in ethics, metaethics, aesthetics, philosophy of love and friendship, political philosophy and with several figures from the history of philosophy, principally: Levinas, Weil, Buber, Fichte, Hegel, Kant, Marx, and Aristotle. Lewis worked at the University of Birmingham first as a Teaching Fellow, and later as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow. He completed a PhD in Sheffield in 2019, under the supervision of Bob Stern and Paul Faulkner.