Denis Dutton

Denis Dutton ( born February 9, 1944 in Los Angeles, California, † December 28, 2010 in Christchurch, New Zealand ) was an American author, Internet entrepreneur, professor of philosophy at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch and libertarian activist.

Life

Dutton was born in Los Angeles, where his parents ran a bookstore, and received his academic training at the University of California, Santa Barbara. First, he began to study chemistry and then switched to philosophy. After graduating in 1966 he spent two years working for the Peace Corps in India. Then he took up the study again, first at New York University, then at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he graduated back in 1973 with his doctoral thesis. After teaching at several universities, including the University of Michigan at Dearborn, he emigrated to New Zealand, founded in 1986 with the New Zealand Skeptics and was from 2008 to 2010 director of the Department of Philosophy University of Canterbury, where he taught since 1984.

Work

The in his book The Art Instinct Dutton 2009: theory presented Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution an evolutionary aesthetics ( Darwinian aesthetics ) rejected the dominant, modern position that cultural factors dominate, and turned off on evolutionary adaptation processes in the Pleistocene.

In addition, the philosopher hired as chief editor of the journal Philosophy and Literature for a generally accessible language in cultural studies and criticized the complex writing styles of many prominent actors, including Judith Butler and Homi K. Bhabha, sharp.

Media policy, he advocated for public radio and from 1995 to 2002 member of the board of Radio New Zealand, which he criticized after the end of his directorship for lack of neutrality. Dutton was co-owner and founder of the websites Arts & Letters Daily, ClimateDebateDaily.com and cybereditions.com. Arts & Letters Daily was highly praised shortly after its publication in 1998 in the London Observer and scored on the basis of the diversity of topics, despite their quite unorthoxen structure after two operators change after about 10 years, more than 3 million page views per month. He was awarded the People's voice Webby Award 2002.

He died of cancer.

Works (selection)

• The Art Instinct. Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution. Bloomsbury Press, New York, 2009, ISBN 978-1-59691-401-8.
• Criticism and Methodius. In The British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol 8 (1973 ), pp. 232-42, ISSN 0007-0904.
• Tribal Art and Artifact. In The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol 51 (1993 ), pp. 13-21, ISSN 0021-8529.