also (improbably) possible, whatever their view of 'romanticism,' is a hopeless romantic. Politics, aesthetics and receptivity The Aesthetic Turn in Political Thought (2014) is a collection of essays, edited by Kompridis, which explores the connections between aesthetics and democratic politics. The book takes as its starting point a statement by Jacques Rancière (who is also a contributor), that "politics is aesthetic in principle." A musician by training, Kompridis has frequently married an interest in aesthetics with other philosophical concerns. Among others, he has authored papers on topics including the philosophy of music under conditions of cultural pluralism ("Amidst the Plurality of Voices: Philosophy of Music after Adorno"), on the relation between receptivity, recognition, and literature ("Recognition and Receptivity: Forms of Normative Response in the Lives of the Animals We Are"—which engages with prior debates about J. M. Coetzee's novel, The Lives of Animals, as well as debates in critical theory on recognition); and on "The priority of receptivity to creativity," a paper that explores Russell Hoban's novel, The Medusa Frequency. Kompridis has lectured on film, on the relationship between cultural memory, diversity, and the arts, and has discussed music and philosophy with his former teacher, the composer Martin Bresnick, in a discussion broadcast on ABC's Big Ideas program. In 2011, Kompridis guest-edited and contributed to a special issue of the journal Ethics and Global Politics on "A Politics of Receptivity". Technology and human being In 2008, Kompridis spoke at a conference on "The Post/Human Condition" held in Auckland (a related essay was published in the online journal Parrhesia). In the talk, Kompridis outlined the potential dangers he saw from the new, convergent "techno-sciences" of genetic engineering, synthetic biology, robotics and nanotechnology, while criticizing what he considered to be the transhumanist aspirations of several major research programs in those fields. According to Kompridis, the post-human is now "a real, not a notional… possibility," and therefore the question of what it means to be human "is all of a sudden a pressing question, a question absolutely pressed for time—since, evidently, the space in which it can still be meaningfully posed, and thus the space in which a meaningful response could be fashioned, is shrinking at an alarming rate." While acknowledging that in a culturally plural world, there can be no single or essentialist conception of what it means to be human, Kompridis nonetheless argues that "we have an obligation to deepen our