Andy Hamilton

Andy Hamilton teaches Philosophy, and also History and Aesthetics of Jazz, at Durham University, UK. During his time at Durham he has also been Adjunct Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Western Australia, Perth, and has taught music aesthetics at Hong Kong University. 

  

He specialises in aesthetics, political philosophy, philosophy of mind, J.S. Mill and Wittgenstein. His books are Pianos Toys Music and Noise: Conversations with Steve Beresford (Bloomsbury, 2021), The Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Wittgenstein and "On Certainty" (2014), The Self In Question: Memory, the Body and Self-Consciousness (Palgrave, 2013), Aesthetics and Music (Continuum, 2007) and Lee Konitz: Conversations on the Improviser's Art (University of Michigan Press, 2007). He has edited Scruton's Aesthetics with Nick Zangwill (Palgrave, 2011), The Aesthetics of Rhythm with Max Paddison and Peter Cheyne (Oxford University Press, 2020), and The Aesthetics of Imperfection with Lara Pearson (Bloomsbury, 2020). At the moment he is completing the monograph Art and Entertainment: A Philosophical Enquiry (Routledge, 2022) and a second edition of Aesthetics and Music (Bloomsbury, 2022). He is also working on a book of conversations with Australian improvising trio The Necks. 

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Andy is a long-standing contributor to "The Wire", "Jazz Journal" and "International Piano" magazines, interviewing and writing features on jazz and classical musicians and composers such as Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, Elliott Carter, Kaija Saariaho and Christian Wolff. He is also a jazz pianist, and has adopted the persona Conservative Britartist Hamilton, whose activities satirise the contemporary artworld.