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The Philosophical Quarterly invites submissions for its 2012 international prize essay competition, the topic of which is 'Philosophy and the Expressive Arts'. The winner will receive a prize of £1,500, and both winning and non-winning entries judged to be of sufficient quality will be published. From Plato on, philosophy has had an uneasy relationship with expressive arts such as narrative, poetry, drama, music, painting, and now film. If philosophy today can learn from science, can it learn from the arts as well - or even instead? If so, what can it learn? Does expressive art access truths, particularly ethical truths, that cannot be expressed any other way? If it does, what can ethicists and other philosophers say about these truths? If it does not, what differentiates expressive from merely decorative art? Some philosophers insist with Wittgenstein that "whatever can be said at all can be said clearly". In that case, are artistic uses of language such as metaphor and imagery just "colour", as Frege called it - just ways of dressing up thoughts that philosophers, by contrast, should consider in their plainest possible form? The closing date for submissions is 1st November 2012. We welcome submissions of 8,000 words or fewer addressing these or other questions about philosophy and the expressive arts.
