Paul Guyer Elected Vice President of the American Society for Aesthetics

Paul Guyer, the Florence R.C. Murray Professor in the Humanities, has been elected vice president of the American Society for Aesthetics (ASA). Founded in 1942, the ASA is dedicated to promoting research, discussion and publication in aesthetics—where aesthetics is understood to include all studies of the arts and related types of experience from a philosophical, scientific or other theoretical standpoint.

Guyer was elected by the ASA’s membership following the organization’s annual conference in November. Having taken on the duties of vice president on February 1, Guyer will serve as the organization’s president from 2011 through 2013, followed by a two-year term as past president.

Guyer received his doctorate in philosophy from Harvard University, teaching at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Illinois at Chicago before joining the Penn faculty in 1983. With much of his career devoted to the history of modern philosophy and the history of aesthetics, Guyer is a general co-editor of the 17-volume Cambridge edition of the works of Immanuel Kant. His recent books include the first ever extensive English translation of the notes and fragments that survived Kant’s death, a survey of Kant titled simply Kant, and three collections of essays—Kant's System of Nature and Freedom, Values of Beauty: Historical Essays in Aesthetics, and Knowledge, Reason, and Taste: Kant's Response to Hume.

A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Guyer is also a recipient of the American Philosophical Association’s Franklin J. Matchette Prize, the Harvard Centennial Medal, and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. He is currently working on a history of modern aesthetics, tentatively entitled Truth and Play.