Larry Shiner
Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, University of Illinois at Springfield
lshin1@uis.edu
Since the 1980s my writing has focused on issues in the philosophy of art and aesthetics. In the two decades previous to 1980, I worked on the critical philosophy of history and philosophy of religion. Generally, I take an interdisciplinary rather than a purely philosophical approach to issues in these areas. As my Intellectual Biography and CV make clear, I began my philosophical work using a phenomenological perspective, then gradually moved toward a more analytical approach inflected by pragmatism.
In addition to my CV and Intellectual Biography, this site provides information on books and articles and makes available selected Lectures and Papers; the PROJECTS section is regularly updated to describe my current work. A distinctive feature of the rubric BOOKS is that the description of the contents of each book is followed by a section called “Revisionary Thoughts,” where I indicate changes I would make if I were writing that book today, including my most recent book, Art Scents: Exploring the Aesthetics of Smell and the Olfactory Arts (Oxford, 2020), for which I already offer several paragraphs of corrections and additional thoughts up to October 2022. This past year, 2025,marked a turning point in both my personal life and research and writing career. I discovered I had a metastatic prostate cancer, although fortunately it has been brought under control by drugs. But the side effects of the drugs have not only caused physical symptoms such as balance problems, but also cognitive deficits such as as memory loss and a general slowing of processing. I have concluded that I want to devote all my time to my wife, Catherine, and to my sister and nieces and nephews and closest friends.
2025 marked