Lydia Goehr is Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. In 2005, she received a Columbia University Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching and in 2007-8 was recipient The Graduate Student Advisory Council (GSAC)'s Faculty Mentoring Award (FMA). She has also been a recipient of Mellon, Getty, and Guggenheim Fellowships, and in 1997 was the Visiting Ernest Bloch Professor in the Music Department at U. California, Berkeley, where she gave a series of lectures on Richard Wagner. She has been a Trustee of the American Society for Aesthetics. In 2002-3, she was the visiting Aby Warburg Professor in Hamburg and a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. In 2005-6, she delivered the Royal Holloway-British Library Lectures in Musicology in London and the Wort Lectures at Cambridge University. In 2008, she was a Visiting Professor at the Freie Universität, Berlin (Cluster: "The Language of Emotions") and in 2009, a visiting professor in the FU-Berlin SFB Theater und Fest. She is the author of The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music (1992; second edition with a new essay, 2007); The Quest for Voice: Music, Politics, and the Limits of Philosophy [essays on Richard Wagner] (1998); Elective Affinities: Musical Essays on the History of Aesthetic Theory [essays on Adorno and Danto] (2008), and co-editor with Daniel Herwitz of The Don Giovanni Moment. Essays on the legacy of an Opera (2006). She has written many articles, most recently on the work of Theodor W. Adorno, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Arthur Danto. She offers courses in the history of aesthetic theory, the contemporary philosophy of the arts, critical theory, and the philosophy of history. Her research interests are in German aesthetic theory and in particular in the relationship between philosophy, politics, history, and music. With Gregg Horowitz, she is series editor of Columbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts, Columbia University Press. She is presently writing a book on the contest of the arts.

Areas of Specialization

Philosophy of Music, Aesthetics, Critical Theory, Philosophy of History, and 19th and 20th Century Philosophy.

Selected articles

"Dissonant Works and the Listening Public", in T. Huhn, ed., Cambridge Companion to Adorno (2004)

"Understanding the Engaged Philosopher" in T. Carman and Mark B. N. Hansen, ed., Cambridge Companion on Merleau-Ponty (2005)

"Philosophical exercises in repetition: on music, humor, and exile in Wittgenstein and Adorno," Karol Berger and Anthony Newcomb, ed, Music and the Aesthetics of Modernity  (2005)

"Reviewing Adorno", introductory essay for Adorno, Critical Models (2005)

 "Undoing the Discourse of Fate. The Case of Der Fliegende Holländer," The Opera Quarterly 21/3 (2005), 1-22

"Juliette fährt nach Mahagonny OR A Critical Reading of Surrealist Opera," The Opera Quarterly 21/4 (2005), 647-674

"Afterwords," Introductory essay to Arthur Danto's Narration and Knowledge (including his Analytical Philosophy of History) (2007)

 "Hardboiled Disillusionment. Mahagonny as the last culinary opera," Cultural Critique 68 (2008), 3-37

"From Opera to Music Drama: Nominal Loss, Titular Gain" in Thomas S. Grey etc. Wagner and his World [2009]; in German as "Musikdrama," S. L. Sorgner, et. al. eds. Wagner und Nietzsche. Kultur-Werk-Wirkung. Ein Handbuch  (2008)

"‘Three Blind Mice'. Goodman, McLuhan and Adorno on the Art of Music and Listening in the Age of Global Transmission," New German Critique 104 (2008), 1-32

"Kunst und Politik," Handbuch der politischen Philosophie und Sozialphilosophie, hrsg. S. Gosepath, W. Hinsch, & B. Rössler (2008) (in German)

"Aida and the Empire of Emotions. On Adorno, Said, and Kluge" (Current Musicology, 2009)

"Perspectivism without Perspective or Philosophy without Art. Standing on the Stage with Nietzsche's Gay Science," Gertrud Koch, ed. Perspektive - Die Spaltung der Standpunkte, Fink, 2009 (in German); forthcoming in English in New Nietzsche Studies

"Opern für Auge und Ohr. Versuch einer bürgerlichen Geschichte des Telefons," in George Möhr, ed., Vom Sinn des Hörens (2009); forthcoming in English, as "The Diva on the Telephone" in Karen Hansen, ed., Technologies of the Diva    

“The Concept of Opera,” Oxford Handbook of Opera, ed. Helen Greenwald