Denis Laurence Dutton (9 February 1944 – 28 December 2010)[1] was an American philosopher of art, web entrepreneur, and media activist. He was a professor of philosophy at the University of CanterburyinChristchurch, New Zealand. He was also a co-founder and co-editor of the websites Arts & Letters Daily, ClimateDebateDaily.com, and cybereditions.com.[2]
Dutton started teaching at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, in 1984.[1] From 2008 to 2010, he was the Head of the Philosophy school in an unofficial capacity and acted briefly as Head of Humanities. At its December 2010 graduation ceremony, the University of Canterbury awarded Dutton a research medal for his work.[4]
Dutton was best known for the web aggregation site Arts & Letters Daily, which he founded in 1998 and which secured him a place among "the most influential media personalities in the world".[8] The site, described as "the first and foremost aggregator of well-written and well-argued book reviews, essays, and other articles in the realm of ideas",[9] features links to articles across the web about literature, art, science, and politics, for which Dutton wrote pithy teasers.[1] In recognition of Arts & Letters Daily, Steven Pinker called Dutton a visionary for recognizing that a website "could be a forum for cutting-edge ideas, not just a way to sell things or entertain the bored".[3]
Dutton served as executive director of Cybereditions, a print on demand publishing company he founded in 2000[10] which specializes in new and out-of-print copyright works, mostly of a scholarly nature. The editorial board of the company has included other academics such as Frederick Crews, Anthony Grafton and Marjorie Perloff.[11]
Dutton wrote on authenticity in art and distinguished between nominal authenticity, in which a work of art is correctly attributed to its author rather than being a forgery, and expressive authenticity, where a work is a true expression of an individual's or a society's values and beliefs.[12]
In his book The Art Instinct (2010)[13] Dutton opposes the view that art appreciation is culturally learned, claiming instead that art appreciation stems from evolutionary adaptions made during the Pleistocene.[14] He set out abbreviated versions of his theory in a 2009 Google Talk lecture[15] and a 2010 TED talk.[16]
Dutton also argued that progress in the arts and sciences had declined, especially since around 1800.[17]
The Bad Writing Contest emerged in an intellectual climate dominated by fallout from the Sokal affair,[21][22] in which the alleged opaqueness and obscurity of postmodern writing came in for criticism: Edward Said, for instance, deplored "diminishment and incoherence" in the writings of some of his colleagues and Martha Nussbaum condemned academic writing that was "ponderous and obscure".[23]
Dutton supported "conservative ideas"[24] and was a member of the Libertarian Party for some years.[3]
Dutton was one of the founding members and first chair of the NZ Skeptics. In 2009, he stated that he believed that "climate change is still an open question".[25]
He was also a passionate supporter of public radio. In the early 1990s he founded the lobby group The New Zealand Friends of Public Broadcasting in response to proposals to devolve New Zealand's two non-commercial public radio stations.[26]
In 1995 he was appointed to the board of directors of Radio New Zealand, where he served for seven years.[27] After concluding his term as a director, Dr Dutton and Dr John Isles issued a report criticising Radio New Zealand for loss of neutrality in news and current affairs, failure to adhere to charter and opposed to contestable funding of broadcasting.[28]
Denis Laurence Dutton (1974). Art and anthropology: aspects of criticism and the social studies. University of California, Santa Barbara.
Denis Dutton (1983). The Forger's art: forgery and the philosophy of art. University of California Press. ISBN0-520-04341-3.
Denis Dutton; Michael Krausz (1985). The Concept of creativity in science and art. M. Nijhoff. ISBN90-247-3127-5.
Denis Dutton (2003). Jerrold Levinson (ed.). "Authenticity in Art". The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 7 January 2011. Retrieved 31 March 2011.
Charles A. Murray; Denis Dutton; Claire Fox (2008). In Praise of Elitism. Centre for Independent Studies, The. ISBN978-1-86432-166-1.
Denis Dutton (2009). The art instinct: beauty, pleasure, & human evolution. Oxford University Press US. ISBN978-0-19-953942-0.
Michael Krausz; Denis Dutton; Karen Bardsley (2009). The idea of creativity. Brill. ISBN978-90-04-17444-3.
^Riemer, Andrew (3 March 2001). "Reading between the dots". The Sydney Morning Herald. p. 8.
^Denis Dutton (2003). Jerrold Levinson (ed.). "Authenticity in Art". The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 7 January 2011. Retrieved 31 March 2011.
^Dutton, Denis (2010). The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN978-1-60819-055-3.
^Gottlieb, Anthony (1 February 2009). "The Descent of Taste". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 May 2010.
^Leo, John (13 March 1999). "Pomobabble rooted in ivy". The Washington Times. p. C1.
^Kelly, Richard (8 April 1999). "Bad blood over bad writing: Critics say US academic language has become so convoluted that it is largely incomprehensible to the point where argument is becoming impossible". The Irish Times. p. 15.
