Hello,
My primary reading interests are in philosophy. My ongoing reading projects (cashed out in lists) are mostly a continuation (or offshoots) of ideas that I found fascinating back in undergrad. Here are some semi-brief explanations of my reading projects/inquiries.
My main interest is in "Philosophical Aestheticism," which is Sebastian Gardner's term for a project that really kicked off with the early German Romantics (but you can find antecedents as far back as Plato in Ion and Phaedrus). Whereas aesthetics proper might study artistic objects and their properties and/or experience, e.g. a painting being beautiful, philosophical aestheticism uses art and affect as a sort of "lens" to interpret things (usually philosophical questions/problems). "Aesthetic Cognitivism" is a similar and more recent project in analytic philosophy.
Some general lists on these topics:
Visual Thinking: using the visual arts to think.
Musical Thinking: using music as a potential cognitive resource.
Emotional Thinking: using affect as a cognitive resource.
Most of my other lists contain some works from the arts (e.g. cat poetry in the Animal Cognition list, Renaissance Art in the Machiavelli list), as I think artists can sometimes reveal things that philosophers, scientists, and historians cannot (though this is probably obvious to the people that use this site).
As a subset of affect, I also enjoy reading about the "cognitive passions," e.g. wonder, curiosity, ekstasis, enchantment, the numinous, and a variety of others. For lists, see the Emotional Thinking list again. For the corresponding objects or spectacles that have been labeled as "wonderous" at some point in history see:
Another corollary of this style of thinking involves symbolism and iconography. I am especially interested in Gilbert Durand's idea of a "transcendental fantastic," which is a sort of imaginary museum of images and dreams that resonate across humanity. Some lists in this direction:
I am also interested in philosophical anthropology e.g. human finitude, our place in the universe, how we think together, and our cognition when compared to the total space of thinking things.
That's about it. I also like gothic lit.