Did you miss this event? Listen to our audio recording here.

How do beauty, the sublime, the tragic and other aesthetic experiences help us to live a well-lived life? Are these experiences a kind of decorative luxury or are they intrinsic to being human? And how essential are the arts in creating and shaping such experiences? The paradoxical and poetic relationship between beauty and ugliness, sorrow and the exquisite, will be explored in an evening that weaves together philosophical conversation and musical delight.

Tom Cochrane

Speaker

Tom Cochrane is a British philosopher based at Flinders University, Adelaide. He held previous positions at the University of Geneva, Queen’s University Belfast, the University of Sheffield and the University of York. He specialises in the philosophy of mind, aesthetics and wellbeing. He is the author of The Emotional Mind: A Control Theory of Affective States (2018) and The Aesthetic Value of the World (2021). He also co-edited The Emotional Power of Music (2013) and has published various articles on music, fiction, emotions, imagination, extended cognition, collective cognition and mental disorders.

Tom can be found on Twitter and his official website. More of his publications can be viewed here.

Lior

Artist

Lior is the Australian singer-songwriter behind five studio albums and multiple ARIA award nominations, including Best Male Artist for his debut Platinum album Autumn Flow. His songwriting expresses a diverse musical palate and is representative of his rich cultural background. Lior has performed and collaborated with Australia’s leading composers, theatremakers, producers and orchestras, including commissions by the Melbourne and Sydney Symphony Orchestras and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. In 2019, he was one of nine artists nationwide to be awarded a Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship.

Lior can be found on Instagram and his official website.

Brigid Hains

Host

Brigid Hains is the editorial director of Aeon Media. An environmental historian by training, she is driven by a deep curiosity about the natural and human worlds. The Sophia Club is a chance for Brigid to express her love of beauty and the arts and to share the heartfelt dimensions of her intellectual life.