I am a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Temple University, where I have been since 2007. I teach a combination of upper-level philosophy courses and interdisciplinary humanities seminars. I recently taught the following philosophy courses: Philosophy of Mind, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy of Death, Philosophy of (not in) Film, The Good Life, and Philosophy of Love. This semester I'm teaching a new course on Free Will and The Good Life. Much of my current work concerns the nature and limits of well-being. For the past two years I have been engaged in an integrated research program that spans topics in aesthetics, ethics, and, for lack of a better term, “analytic” (as opposed to historical) existentialism. The unifying thread is well-being. My research interests range across a wide variety of topics in ethics, the philosophy of art, and general value theory, such as the nature of pleasure, the relationship between well-being and the meaning of life, theories of love, the metaphysics of death, theories of humor, the appeal of horror, and the nature of aesthetic value. I have written essays on an array of topics in the philosophy of art and have particular interests in the philosophy of (not in) film. The first area in which I developed research interests is the philosophy of art. My initial interest in aesthetics came via the philosophy of (not in) film. I went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to work with the foremost philosopher of film, Noël Carroll. I have a long-standing passion for cinema and pursued a graduate minor in film while working on my PhD in philosophy. In the last couple of years, I have published several articles in the philosophy of film and on the philosophical contributions made by film. Most of my work in the philosophy of art has been concerned with our emotional engagement with narrative fiction. So far, I have explored several fundamental problems regarding our emotional responses to art. I've published articles on the paradox of fiction, the paradox of suspense, and the paradox of tragedy. In addition, I wrote my dissertation on the relationship between art and morality, focusing on the interaction between the moral emotions and amusement. In a series of independent papers I engage the current literature on the topic, and develop several new arguments in support of moralism about art—the view that moral flaws in an artwork can be detrimental to its aesthetic value. In the philosophy of art, I am currently most interested in the ways in which narrative art may instruct audiences through affective engagement. The best way to get in touch with me is through email: asmuts@gmail.com CV | Research | Teaching |