In this event, Kathleen Higgins and Kate Warlow-Corcoran will reflect on the ways aesthetics aids people experiencing loss. Some practices related to bereavement, such as funerals, are scripted, but many others are recursive, improvisational, mundane—telling stories, listening to music, and reflecting on art or literature. These grounding, aesthetic practices can ease the disorienting effects of loss, shedding new light on the importance of aesthetics for personal and communal flourishing.

Kathleen Higgins is Professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. Her main areas of research are continental philosophy, philosophy of the emotions, and aesthetics, particularly musical aesthetics. Her last book, Aesthetics in Grief and Mourning: Philosophical Reflections on Coping with Loss, was published by The University of Chicago Press in 2024.

Kate Warlow-Corcoran is a UK-based philosopher interested in 19th and 20th Century European philosophy (particularly the work of Theodor Adorno) and contemporary philosophy of mind. She recently completed an MRes in Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London.