RIP Denis Dutton, philosopher, aesthete, aggregator

Denis Dutton has died. An American philosopher working in New Zealand, Dutton is probably best known as the found of the Arts and Letters Daily, one of the best of the early Web 1.0 aggregators. The ALDaily has always been a great read, but my feelings about Dutton himself are somewhat ambivalent.

When I was teaching philosophy at Trent University in Peterborough, we invited Dutton to give the annual Ryle Lectures, a series that brings a distinguished philosopher to the university for lectures and informal meetings with students, staff and the public. Dutton's lectures were not very good. They consisted mostly of slide shows and amounted to little more than a version of "what I did on my summer vacation" wrapped in a weakly-argued anti-Gombrichian thesis about evolution and objective aesthetic value. Nor did Dutton do much to ingratiate himself to his hosts: his preference for lunchtime conversation appeared to be based in either red-baiting or feminist-baiting. All told, his visit was a disappointment.

But he did do some valuable work in philosophy and art. His essay "Authenticity in Art", written for the Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics, is excellent. This piece was a big influence on the arguments in chapters 3 and 7 of AH, especially his riff on the importance of a critical audience in maintaining a living artistic tradition. Indeed, every fan of contemporary jazz should pay attention to his argument about the death of opera. I also helped myself to a great anecdote from this essay:

A Pacific Island dancer was once asked about his native culture. “Culture?” he responded. “That’s what we do for the tourists.”

He will be missed.