Introduction to Philosophy Aesthetic Theory and Practice

This book series started off as a single open textbook with sections on various topics, and the Aesthetics section was conceived and led in the early stages by Scott Clifton, who developed an outline of chapters for that section, recruited authors, and edited their chapters. Scott had to leave the project before we moved from a single textbook to a series of individual books, and I would like to thank him for his work on the book. He was one of the first to sign up for this project, and helped shape it along the way.

Special thanks to book editor Valery Vino, who reconceived the book from its original plan, incorporating most of the chapters that had already been written as well as recruiting authors for new chapters. He also worked with authors to do most of the edits to the chapters. Valery has been incredibly dedicated to this book, and has done an excellent job editing it. I want to thank him for his patience, and also for gently and kindly nudging me for updates to keep things moving along.

I would like to thank the authors in this book for their patience as well, as we worked through the process of recruiting authors, writing chapters, peer review, editing, copy editing, formatting in Pressbooks, and checking for accessibility. I was not as quick to do necessary tasks as I had hoped I could be, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic when my work as the Academic Director of the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology at the University of British Columbia Vancouver got busier than I could have imagined it ever would. Suddenly doing a project in my spare time outside of my regular job became next to impossible. I am excited that this book is now published, and am sorry it took so long to do so.

Also instrumental to the success of this book are the peer reviewers, Geoff Boucher and Gene Flanady, who volunteered their time and expertise to read through a draft of the book and provide constructive comments and suggestions.

Jonathan Lashley has done an amazing job with the design of the book covers for this series, using original artwork by Heather Salazar (who is the editor for the Philosophy of Mind book in this series). The book covers are exceptionally well done, and really bring the series together as a whole.
I would also like to thank Chris Hubbard for providing much-needed help with copyediting, and Toby Steiner for importing and formatting the chapters in Pressbooks. Their work towards the end of the project was invaluable in getting this book published.

When I started this project there were many discussions amongst philosophers from various parts of the world on the Rebus Community platform, and their ideas and suggestions contributed significantly to the final products. There were also numerous people who gave comments on draft chapter outlines for each book. Thank you to the many unnamed philosophers who have contributed to the book in these and other ways!

This book series would not have gotten beyond the idea stage were it not for the support of the Rebus Community. I want to thank Hugh McGuire for believing in the project enough to support what we both realised at the time was probably much bigger than even our apprehensions about its enormity. Zoe Wake Hyde was instrumental in getting the project started, particularly in helping us develop workflows and documentation. And I’m not sure I can ever thank Apurva Ashok enough for being an unfailingly enthusiastic and patient supporter and guide for more months than I care to count. She spent a good deal of time working with me and the book editors to figure out how to make a project like this work on a day-to-day level, and taught me a great deal about the open publishing process. Apurva kept me on track when I would sometimes drop the ball or get behind on this off-the-side-of-my-desk project. She is one of the best collaborative partners I have never (yet!) met in person.

Finally, I want to thank my family for understanding how important this work is and why I have chosen to stay up late so many nights to do it. And for their patience on the many groggy, pre-coffee mornings that followed.