Hans Maes received his PhD from the University of Leuven, Belgium, and conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and University of Maryland, USA. He is currently Lecturer in History and Philosophy of Art at the University of Kent and Associate Director of the Aesthetics Research Group. He has authored papers on a variety of subjects in aesthetics, including the role of intention in the interpretation of art, the notion of free beauty, and the relation between art and pornography. In 2010 he was elected President of the Dutch Society for Aesthetics.
Jerrold Levinson is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he has taught since 1976. He is the author of Music, Art, and Metaphysics (Cornell University Press, 1990), The Pleasures of Aesthetics (Cornell University Press, 1996), Music in the Moment (Cornell University Press, 1998), L=art, la musique, et l=histoire (Editions de l'eclat, 1998), La musique de film: fiction et narration (Presses Universitaires de Pau, 2000), and Contemplating Art (OUP, 2006), as well as editor of Aesthetics and Ethics (CUP, 1998) and The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics (OUP, 2003), and co-editor of Aesthetic Concepts (OUP, 2001).