Andy Hamilton
Recent News
Andy Hamilton Interviewed in 3:AM MAgazine
Richard Marshall February 2015
A.J. Hamilton is the jazzy funkster philosopher who riffs over a range of themes. He thinks about self consciousness, phenomenology, Gareth Evan’s account, Wittgenstein’s, philosophical aesthetics, Kant and Adorno, music as an art, the role of the public intellectual and the demise of expensive investigative journalism. This is a cool hand.... Read the full interview
Andy Hamilton - 2013 Stieren Arts and Entertainment Lecture
Trinity University Department of Philosophy September 2013
"Art and Entertainment: Louis Armstrong, Charles Dickens, and Howard Hawks"
Louis Armstrong was a very great musical artist, who always thought of himself first as an entertainer: “My life has been music, it’s always come first, but the music ain’t worth nothing if you can’t lay it on the public”. But he knew that his clowning and crowd - pleasing were compatible with being an artist: “...it’s got to be art because the world has recognised our music from New Orleans, else it would have been dead today”. This lecture argues that, like the modern Western system of the arts, the modern system of entertainment – music-hall, circuses, professional sport... – did not assume definite shape till the 18th or 19th century, though its ingredients were found in classical, medieval and Renaissance periods. It argues that the highest humane art seeks a broad audience, in a way often deemed unique to entertainment. The examples of Louis Armstrong, Charles Dickens and Howard Hawks are contrasted with the more hermetic high art of Lennie Tristano, Marcel Proust and Andrei Tarkovsky.
Andy Hamilton on the Philosopher's Zone
Alan Saunders March 2011
What do we mean when we say that the hills are alive to the sound of music? Isn't the point not that music has sound but that it is sound? And does this mean that the source of the sound - the singer, the violinist, the guitarist - doesn't, from a musical point of view, really matter? This week, we explore some difficult questions in the philosophy of music.