Professor of Philosophy
Director, Center for Vietnamese Philosophy, Culture, and Society - www.temple.edu/vietnamese_center
Ph.D., University of Toronto, 1979
M.A., University of Toronto, 1973
Professor Alperson’s main interests are in aesthetics, the philosophy of the arts, theory of culture, value theory, and theories of interpretation and criticism, with special interests in the philosophy of music and philosophical questions concerning creativity, performance, and improvisation. Professor Alperson was the editor of The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, the journal of the American Society of Aesthetics, from 1993 – 2003 and is the General Editor of the Blackwell Series, Foundations of Aesthetics. He is currently at work on a book on the philosophy of music. He is the Founding Director of the Center for Vietnamese Philosophy, Culture, and Society and was the Founding Director of the Center for the Humanities at Temple. He directs the Department's faculty exchange program with Vietnam, leading yearly seminars in Hanoi. He is also a sometime jazz musician.
Selected Bibliography
• “The Instrumentality of Music” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, forthcoming, 2009. .
• “Music, Mind, and Morality: Arousing the Body Politic,” The Journal of Aesthetic Education, forthcoming, 2008. Noël Carroll co-author.
• "The Sounding of the World: Aesthetic Reflections on Traditional Gong Music of Vietnam,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 2007. Nguyen Chí Ben, To Ngoc Thanh, co-authors.
• "The Philosophy of Music: Formalism and Beyond," in The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics, Peter Kivy, ed. (Blackwell, 2004).
• "Creativity in Art,” in The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics, Jerrold Levinson, ed. (Oxford, 2003).
• Diversity and Community: An Interdisciplinary Reader, editor. (Blackwell, 2002).
• Musical Worlds: New Directions in the Philosophy of Music, editor. (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998).
• "Improvisation” and “Performance,” in The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, Michael Kelly, ed. (Oxford, 1998).
• The Philosophy of the Visual Arts, editor. (Oxford, 1992).
Recent Courses
• Art and Society
• History of Aesthetics
• Problems in Aesthetics
• The Philosophy of Music
• Senior Seminar: The Philosophy of Culture
Contact Information
Office: 729 Anderson Hall
Mailing Address:
Department of Philosophy
Anderson Hall
Temple University
Philadelphia, PA 19122
Phone: (215) 204-5620