Kathleen Marie Higgins (born 1954) is an American professor of philosophy at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...

where she has been teaching for over thirty years. She specializes in

aesthetics Aesthetics (also spelled esthetics) is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of beauty and taste (sociology), taste, which in a broad sense incorporates the philosophy of art.Slater, B. H.Aesthetics ''Internet Encyclopedia of Ph ...

philosophy of music Philosophy of music is the study of "fundamental questions about the nature and value of music and our experience of it".Andrew Kania,The Philosophy of Music, ''The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'', Spring 2014 edition, edited by Edward N. Zal ...

, nineteenth and twentieth-century

continental philosophy Continental philosophy is a group of philosophies prominent in 20th-century continental Europe that derive from a broadly Kantianism, Kantian tradition.Continental philosophers usually identify such conditions with the transcendental subject or ...

, and philosophy of emotion.

Education and career

Higgins earned her B.A. in music from the

University of Missouri–Kansas City The University of Missouri–Kansas City (UMKC or Kansas City) is a Public university, public research university in Kansas City, Missouri, United States. UMKC is part of the University of Missouri System and has a UMKC School of Medicine, medic ...

and completed her graduate work in philosophy at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

, receiving her M.A., M.Phil, and PhD. Professor Higgins has taught at the

University of California, Riverside The University of California, Riverside (UCR or UC Riverside) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Riverside, California, United States. It is one of the ten campuses of the University of Cali ...

, and she is a regular visiting professor at the

University of Auckland The University of Auckland (; Māori: ''Waipapa Taumata Rau'') is a public research university based in Auckland, New Zealand. The institution was established in 1883 as a constituent college of the University of New Zealand. Initially loc ...

. She has held appointments as Resident Scholar at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Study and Conference Center (1993), and as a Visiting Fellow of the

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public university, public research university and member of the Group of Eight (Australian universities), Group of Eight, located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton, A ...

Philosophy Department and the Canberra School of Music (1997), and also of the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of

KU Leuven KU Leuven (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) is a Catholic research university in the city of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium. Founded in 1425, it is the oldest university in Belgium and the oldest university in the Low Countries. In addition to its mai ...

(2013). She received an Alumni Achievement Award from the Conservatory of Music at the University of Missouri–Kansas City (1999).

Philosophical work

Her work deals with the

philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) developed his philosophy during the late 19th century. He owed the awakening of his philosophical interest to reading Arthur Schopenhauer's ''Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung'' ('' The World as Will and Repres ...

, the ethical aspects of music, musical universality, and the emotion of

grief Grief is the response to the loss of something deemed important, particularly to the death of a person to whom or animal to which a Human bonding, bond or affection was formed. Although conventionally focused on the emotional response to loss, ...

. She has published over fifty articles on these topics as well as on beauty,

kitsch ''Kitsch'' ( ; loanword from German) is a term applied to art and design that is perceived as Naivety, naïve imitation, overly eccentric, gratuitous or of banal Taste (sociology), taste. The modern avant-garde traditionally opposed kitsch ...

virtue A virtue () is a trait of excellence, including traits that may be morality, moral, social, or intellectual. The cultivation and refinement of virtue is held to be the "good of humanity" and thus is Value (ethics), valued as an Telos, end purpos ...

feminism Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

, marketing environmentalism,

Indian aesthetics Indian art evolved with an emphasis on inducing special spiritual or philosophical states in the audience, or with representing them symbolically. Rasas in the performing arts The theory of rasa (aesthetics), rasas still forms the aesthetic ...

Chinese philosophy Chinese philosophy (Simplified Chinese characters, simplified Chinese: 中国哲学; Traditional Chinese characters, traditional Chinese: 中國哲學) refers to the philosophical traditions that originated and developed within the historical ...

, musical emotion,

synesthesia Synesthesia (American English) or synaesthesia (British English) is a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. People with sy ...

, television, death, and the philosophies of nineteenth-century philosopher

Arthur Schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer ( ; ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the Phenomenon, phenomenal world as ...

and contemporary philosophers Arthur C. Danto and her late husband

Robert C. Solomon Robert C. Solomon (September 14, 1942 – January 2, 2007) was a philosopher and business ethicist, notable author, and Distinguished Teaching Professor of Business and Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, where he held a named c ...

. Her books have been translated into 10 languages: Chinese, Dutch, German, Japanese,

Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, people from the Korean peninsula or of Korean descent * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Korean **Korean dialects **See also: North–South differences in t ...

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

, Polish, Portuguese, Slovenian, and Spanish. She taught a course for

The Great Courses The Teaching Company, doing business as The Great Courses, formerly Wondrium, is a media production company which produces educational, video, and audio content in the form of courses, documentaries, and series under two content brands: The Grea ...

, alongside her late husband Robert C. Solomon, entitled ''Will to Power: The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche'' (1999)''.'' She also taught a course named ''World Philosophy'' (2001).

Works

* ''Nietzsche's Zarathustra'' (Temple University Press, 1987; rev. ed. 2010), which was named one of the Outstanding Academic Books of 1988-1989 by ''Choice''. * ''The Music of Our Lives'' (Temple University Press, 1991, new ed. 2011). * Comic Relief: Nietzsche's "Gay Science" (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). *A Short History of Philosophy, co-authored with Robert C. Solomon (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). * * * "Arthur Schopenhauer," ''The Age of German Idealism'', Routledge History of Philosophy, Volume VI, Routledge, New York, 1993, Chapter 10. * The Music between Us: Is Music the Universal Language? (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2012).

Co-edited

* * (8th edition, Cengage Learning, 2009, ) * *The Philosophy of (Erotic) Love, co-edited with Robert C. Solomon (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1991). *From Africa to Zen: An Invitation to World Philosophy, co-edited with Robert C. Solomon (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 1993); second edition, 2003; Chinese translation, 2004. *The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, co-edited with Bernd Magnus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). *A Companion to Aesthetics, co-edited with Stephen Davies, Robert Hopkins, Robert Stecker, and David Cooper, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2009). *Passion, Death, and Spirituality: The Philosophy of Robert C. Solomon, co-edited with David Sherman, Sophia Studies in Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures 1 (Dordrecht: Springer, 2012). *

Textbooks

*Thirteen Questions in Ethics, co-edited with Lee Bowie and Meredith Michaels (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992; Thirteen Questions in Ethics and Social Philosophy, 2nd edition (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1998). *World Philosophy: A Text with Readings, co-edited with Robert C. Solomon (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995). *Aesthetics in Perspective (edited) (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1996). *The Big Questions, co-authored with Robert C. Solomon, 8th ed. (Belmont, Ca.: Wadsworth, 2010); 9th ed., 2014. *Introducing Philosophy, co-authored with Robert C. Solomon and Clancy Martin, 10th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

References

External links