Jerrold Levinson

Jerrold Levinson (born 11 July 1948 ) is an American philosopher who is emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is particularly noted for his work on defining art, the aesthetics of music, ontology of art, philosophy of film, interpretation, aesthetics experience, and humour.

Education and career Levinson started his studies in 1965 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he gained a B.S. degree in Philosophy and Chemistry in 1969. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Michigan in 1974, under the supervision of Jaegwon Kim and Kendall Walton, his dissertation covering the topic of "Properties, Qualities, and Categoriality".

During 1974–1975, he was visiting assistant professor at SUNY Albany. In 1976, he became assistant professor at the University of Maryland, was promoted to associate professor in 1982, and full professor in 1991. In 2004, he was accorded the title of distinguished university professor. He became professor emeritus in 2018. He has also been visiting professor at other US institutes, including the Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University. He has also held visiting appointments in other countries, such as England (University of London and University of Kent), New Zealand (University of Canterbury), France (Université de Rennes), Belgium (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Portugal (Universidade de Lisboa) and Switzerland (Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana). During 2010-2011 he held an International Francqui Chair at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), and in 2011 received the Premio Internazionale of the Società Italiana d'Estetica.

In 2003, Levinson co-directed a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute, Art, Mind, and Cognitive Science, and during 2001-2003 was President of the American Society for Aesthetics.

Philosophical work Levinson advocates the position that music has the same relation to thought as does language; i.e., if language is an expression of thought, so is music. This is particularly revealed in his analysis of Wittgenstein's ideas on meaning in music: "What Wittgenstein is underscoring here about the appreciation of music is this. Music is not understood in a vacuum, as a pure structure of sounds fallen from the stars, one which we receive via some pure faculty of musical perception. Music is rather inextricably embedded in our form of life, a form of life that is, as it happens, essentially linguistic. Thus music is necessarily apprehended, at least in part, in terms of the language and linguistic practices that define us and our world." This raises interesting points in the debate on absolute music.