Keren Gorodeisky

My work explores our nature as human by focusing on: (1) the distinctive affective character, rationality, and value of our aesthetic engagements, (2) the spontaneous-receptive character of human emotions, which, I argue, are distinctively rational exercises of human agency, yet receptive, embodied, and vulnerable ways of being in the world, and (3) our second-personal relationships with each other. My first monograph, "Beholden to Beauty: Aesthetic Value and the Authority of Pleasure," shows aesthetic appreciation to be affective yet distinctively rational and a self-conscious act of agency. Like other human emotions, aesthetic appreciation is an exercise of an affective capacity of reason. And while belonging to a universal capacity, appreciating beauty is tied to who we are as persons and as sociable beings.