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Introduction

I attended the local comprehensive school (The Arnewood School in New Milton) before earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Philosophy at the University of Southampton. I then combined full-time work in the Modern Languages Department at Southampton with completing an MPhil focused on nineteenth-century philosophy. In 2017, I was appointed to a PhD position in Philosophical Aesthetics at Uppsala University in Sweden. During my doctoral studies, I worked as an Editorial Assistant at the British Journal of Aesthetics, was a visiting researcher at Birkbeck College and Auburn University, and received Essay Prizes from the European Society for Aesthetics (2020) and the British Society for Aesthetics (2024). I was subsequently a postdoc in the Department of Literature and Rhetoric at Uppsala University. In September 2025, I returned to the UK to take up my current position at Queen’s University.

Teaching

I teach the ‘Logic’, ‘General Philosophy’ and ‘Moral Philosophy’ first-year papers at Queen’s as well as the ‘Ethics’ finals paper.

Research

My primary research project focuses on philosophical aesthetics and draws on work in the history of philosophy, value theory, epistemology, and normative theory. It revolves around two currently neglected claims with a venerable historical lineage. First, that objects bearing aesthetic value demand that we cognitively explore them on their own terms and for their own sake as the distinct individuals they are. Second, that intelligible beauty is the highest form of aesthetic value. I intend to develop a comprehensive account of aesthetic value and aesthetic normativity from these two claims.

I also work on the philosophy of honesty and nineteenth-century philosophy. In a secondary research project, I argue for a particular view of honesty: to be honest is to strive to live—and succeed in living—in harmony with the truth.

Publications

  • Page, J. (forthcoming) Winner of the British Society of Aesthetics Essay Prize 2024 ‘Artistic Honesty’, British Journal of Aesthetics.
  • Page, J. (forthcoming) ‘Aesthetic Communication’, Ergo
  • Page, J. (2024) ‘Nietzsche contra Schopenhauer on Art and Truth’,The Monist, Vol. 107, Issue 4, October 2024, Pages 378–392, https://doi.org/10.1093/monist/onae021

A full list of my publications can be found here


Research

My main research interests are in epistemology and metaphysics, philosophy of mind and action, philosophy of art, and the philosophy of Wittgenstein. In my most recent book, Action, Knowledge, and Will, I argue that human behaviour has four irreducibly different dimensions—physical, psychological, intellectual, and ethical—which were amalgamated or confused in the traditional idea of a ‘will’. My work in philosophy of art has focused mainly on the visual arts. My book The Objective Eye is about the nature of colours and shapes, their representation in pictorial art, and the concept of realism in art theory. I have also written about art and neuroscience.

Publications

Links to some of my recent publications:

Introduction

I grew up in Adelaide, South Australia. I did my undergraduate degree in philosophy and French at the University of Adelaide, followed by Honours in philosophy. I then did a PhD in philosophy at Flinders University. After temporary lectureships at Macquarie University and the University of Adelaide, I started a permanent lectureship at the University of Manchester in 2006. Shortly afterwards, I took leave to complete a three-year Macquarie University Research Fellowship in Sydney. After returning to the UK, I was Senior Lecturer then Reader at Manchester before moving to Oxford to take up my current position at Queen’s in 2019. I have held visiting appointments at the EHESS in Paris, the University of Sydney, and the University of British Columbia.

Teaching

I teach philosophy to undergraduates in all years at Queen’s. I teach the ‘General Philosophy’ first-year paper, and the option papers ‘Knowledge and Reality’ and ‘Aesthetics’. I am happy to supervise graduate work in a broad range of areas in the philosophy of art and aesthetics.

Research

My research addresses issues at the intersection of the philosophy of art, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. Much of it concerns fundamental issues about the representational arts, including the nature of depiction, and of cinematic and photographic representation. I am also interested in the nature and value of art, the expression of emotion, and the nature of genre. In my recent book, Fiction (Oxford University Press, 2020), I develop an account of fiction as a social practice, providing original explanations of the nature of fiction, the norms governing its understanding and interpretation, and the nature of fictional entities. I have recently embarked on a new research project, the aim of which is to determine the nature of artistic media and styles and their interpretative and evaluative roles.

Publications

For a list of my publications, please see my PhilPeople website.

Contact

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