Aesthetic Atheism - Prof. Tom Leddy

This Forum of the Humanist Community in Silicon Valley (www.humanists.org) was held on 2/11/2018. To see all of our Forum videos, please visit vimeo.com/hcsv.

"Aesthetic Atheism" is Professor Tom Leddy’s term for a philosophical position that is atheist in that it denies the existence of God, souls and immortality, but is open to valuing religious experience as a kind of aesthetic phenomenon. This theory draws from his readings of such philosophers as Plato, Kant and Nietzsche. He argues that religious experience can be best described as an experience of the sublime. He has written about this theory on his blog: http://aestheticstoday.blogspot.com/2016/06/table-of-contents-for-aesthetic-atheism.html.

Thomas Leddy is Professor of Philosophy at San Jose State University where he has taught since 1983. He received his Ph.D. from Boston University in 1981. He is author of "The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: The Aesthetics of Everyday Life" (2012) and edits a popular blog on aesthetics, Aesthetics Today: http://aestheticstoday.blogspot.com/

(Note: The opening and closing music in the video is Copyright (c) 2017 Brian J. Davis All Rights Reserved)