Nick Riggle, PhD

Professor Riggle writes for both academic and general audiences. His first book, On Being Awesome: A Unified Theory of How Not to Suck was published with Penguin Books in 2017. It develops a distinctive way of thinking about the value of being awesome and considers some of the nuances and implications of emphasizing awesomeness in social life. His second book, Aesthetic Life and Why It Matters (Oxford University Press, 2022) is coauthored with Dominic McIver Lopes and Bence Nanay. It explores three ways of thinking about why aesthetic value plays such an important part in our lives. Professor Riggle’s third book, This Beauty: A Philosophy of Being Alive is forthcoming from Basic Books (December 2022). It develops the thought that loving beauty is a way of staying in touch with the value of being alive. In addition to his books, Professor Riggle has published over a dozen academic papers on issues in aesthetics, the philosophy of art, philosophy of language, moral psychology, value theory, the history of philosophy, and other areas. A fourth book, under contract with Oxford University Press, collects some of these essays. It is entitled Understanding Aesthetic Life: Essays. Two of Professor Riggle’s current projects are (1) to develop a ‘communitarian’ theory of aesthetic value and use it to address a range of issues in aesthetics and (2) to better understand the concept of the ‘highest good’ (the ‘summum bonum’) to test the strength of the view that aesthetic value is the highest good. You can learn more about Professor Riggle’s work on his website, www.nickriggle.com.  

Professor Riggle loves food and he regularly teaches a course he created that combines his loves, Philosophy Through Food (PHIL 118). He also frequently teaches Aesthetics (PHIL 480), Virtues and Vices (PHIL 336), and Philosophical Methods (PHIL 300). He also teaches courses in ethics and is developing a new course entitled “Art and Ethics”.