In cooperation with the Center for Humanities and Social Change Berlin and the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs, we invite all scholars to contribute to this collection, seminar plans and syllabi which serve to pluralize teaching in the field of critical theory/s. The list of categories according to which...
We often criticize others for beliefs that are dogmatic, biased, or wishful. What, exactly, are we criticizing? Many epistemologists accept that such believing is problematic because it is not appropriately responsive to epistemic reasons. But why care about that? Or, to put it another way, why are epistemic norms authoritative...
Hegel's lectures on aesthetics bear witness not to the cessation of artistic activity as such, but to a progressive decline in its significance for human self-understanding. Still, the nature and extent of this decline remain contested. Is the creation of new art a vestigial activity in a world governed by...
Kant, Ontology, and the A Priori is a close studyof Kants conception of metaphysical propositions. In it Moltke Gram aimsto show in what sense Kant is offering a theory of metaphysical propositions about objects in general. Gram presents a criticism of the tendency to focus on Kants theory of dialectic...
The Epistemology of G. E. Mooreis an examination of the philosophy of G. E. Moore, one of the foremost Anglo-American, analytic philosophers of the twentieth century.This book, together with Reinhardt Grossmanns Reflections on Freges Philosophy and Moltke Grams Kant, Ontology, and the A Priori, seeks to redress an imbalance in...
InReason and Evidence in Husserls PhenomenologyDavid Michael Kleinberg-Levinexamines Husserls concept of necessary, a priori, and absolutely certain indubitable evidence, which he terms apodictic, and his related concept of complete evidence, which he terms adequate. To do so it explicates some of the more general relevant features of phenomenology as a...
The Anatomy of Disillusion is an introduction to Heideggers phenomenology that focuses on Heideggers notion of truth. Unlike many of his contemporaries, W.B. Macomber presents Heidegger as a systematic thinker, whose phenomenology is inextricably bound up with his ontology and epistemology.
Science and the Humanitiescontains five lectures concerning the discussion of the relation of science and the humanities, focusing on the work of thinkers such as James B. Conant and C. P. Snow.
The teachings of Epicurus, whose philosophy focused on the pursuit of happiness, attracted adherents throughout the ancient Mediterranean world and deeply influenced later European thought. The Philosophy of Epicurus contains a long introductory essay on the philosophy of Epicurus and a selection of primary texts. In inGeorge K. Strodach translates...
For an Ontology of Morals: A Critique of Contemporary Ethical Theory assesses contemporary trends in ethical theory, including the deontological tradition dating back to Kant, the teleological tradition of the utilitarians, the analytic movement, and the existentialist-phenomenologist movement. In refuting these trends, Henry B. Veatch argues that moral and ethical...
Motive and Intention is a critique of certain conceptual foundations of the description and judgment of human action. Drawing on sources such as narrative history, Roy Lawrence analyzes examples of such assessments and provides and independent base for appraising familiar and tenacious theoretical presumptions. In so doing he illuminates many...
First published in German in 1917, On Emotional Presentation investigates the interrelation of emotions, values, and obligation. Alexius Meinong presents a realist theory of values in which values are given in and through emotion but are also ontologically independent of emotion or any subjective attitude. Meinongs first discusses the concept...
First published in German in 1940 and widely recognized as a classic of philosophical anthropology, Laughing and Crying considers this significant pair of types of expressive behavior, considering them both in themselves and in their relation to the fundamental nature of humanity.
In recent years, moral and political philosophers have begun to focus upon the impact of pluralism on conceptions of civic obligation, legitimacy, and justice. According to the political liberalism of John Rawls, citizens should justify their political views in terms of values that are neutral among divergent worldviews; they should...
In this thesis, I argue that life and soul as analyzed in De Anima are examples of what Aristotle calls a "pros hen legomena" structure, a structure in which various things are said to be living in relation to one thing, which is the central meaning of life. The various...
As Wilfrid Sellars put it, one of the principal aims of philosophy "is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term." In this I think Sellars is right: the discipline is charged with taking a "synoptic...
This dissertation consists of three self-standing essays, each of which focuses on a dialogue from Plato's later period. Together, they touch on some of his well-known views in metaphysics and moral psychology, from his theory of forms to his theory of the tripartite soul. But the topic that unifies these...
In this dissertation I pose a new puzzle about desire, one grounded in three plausible but jointly inconsistent propositions. According to the standard view in metaphysics, (1) all desires are dispositional states. Epistemologists, though, think that (2) we have privileged access to some of our desires. But (3) it is...
Artificial agent development is motivated by the dream of making machines perform undesirable labor instead of humans. To replace humans in undesirable labor, it follows that the machines should not engage in actions that will lead to devastating consequences. They should be “moral” artificial agents. In my paper, I deal...
My dissertation draws on Heideggers interpretation of Kant to argue that Kant overestimates the role that causality plays in structuring our experience. Heidegger suggests that Kants analysis of experience mistakenly universalizes a fraction of our experience: the experience of material things. I defend the merits of this suggestion by offering...
Plato's readers struggle to reconcile his combination of conceptual argument and mimetic fiction. In this dissertation, I suggest we can understand this discomfiting combination if we understand the dialogues as "the mimesis of people in speech." Because speech is both referential and performative, speech is a hybrid of thought and...
The concept of epistemic infringement marks a novel entry into the social epistemology literature concerning epistemic misconduct. Epistemic infringement constitutively involves the systematic contravention of social and epistemic norms, particularly in a manner that serves to erode epistemic agency. This dissertation identifies epistemic infringement as a useful theoretical tool for...
In the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, I find that Aristotle endorses two distinct forms of political activity. The first form, which I term statesman activity, is intrinsically valuable. Aristotle thinks that we should value this kind of political activity because it is constitutive of human well-being. The second form, which...
If I mistakenly hear you ask for directions to the “shore” when instead you asked for directions to the “store,” the miscommunication is probably an innocent mistake. If, on the other hand, a man misunderstands a woman’s refusal of his sexual advances as consent, the mistake seems like it might...
This dissertation explores the role and relation of capitalism in contemporary political life, with the aim to reveal the inherent oppression of what I refer to as capitalist culture. To this end, the project follows three main objectives: (1) to identify the widespread and pervasive nature of capitalist culture (2)...
This dissertation is about three of Cicero’s notable projects in ideal theory in his middle and late periods (between roughly 54-43 BCE). It comes during a resurgence in interest in Cicero’s contributions as a philosopher. First, I discuss Cicero’s philosophical account of vera gloria (true glory) in contradistinction to mere...
This dissertation has two main aims. The first is to show that relying on the testimony of others is not as “epistemically special” as many epistemologists have made it out to be. More specifically, I argue that relying on someone’s testimony neither provides us with a non-evidential, epistemic reason to...
This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries—and the generous support of the Pennsylvania State University. Learn more at the TOME website,... and This book investigates what change is, according to Aristotle, and how it affects his conception of being. Mark Sentesy argues that change leads Aristotle to develop first-order metaphysical concepts such as matter, potency, actuality, sources of being, and the teleology of emerging things. He shows that Aristotle’s distinctive ontological claim—that...
This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries—and the generous support of the Pennsylvania State University. Learn more at the TOME website,... and In Original Forgiveness, Nicolas de Warren challenges the widespread assumption that forgiveness is always a response to something that has incited it. Rather than considering forgiveness exclusively in terms of an encounter between individuals or groups after injury, he argues that availability for the possibility of forgiveness represents an original...
This dissertation offers a novel interpretation of Aristotle’s notion of teaching (didaskalia). In Part I, I defend my claim that we can find in Aristotle’s works a conception of teaching, which is a crucial yet under-explored part of his theory of education. In Part II, I use this interpretation to...
The philosophical literature on modals is dominated by the following paradigm: modals are modeled as quantifiers over sets of possible worlds. The diversity of modal “fla- vors” (e.g., epistemic, deontic, teleological interpretations of modals) is accommodated within the paradigm by logical mechanisms that allow extralinguistic factors to restrict the quantificational...
Imagine someone who was raised to hold a number of irrational and objectionable beliefs. There seems to be an important sense in which they lack control over these beliefs, and so we might think they are not responsible for them. But many of our beliefs are like this: they are...
“Entertaining Strangers” reveals how theories and practices of hospitality shaped and were shaped by the early modern print and theater industries. Whereas earlier studies of hospitality and literature have focused on aristocratic patronage, in this dissertation I reveal the vital importance of commercial hospitality as a framework for ethical and...
Having an emotion involves having an evaluative point of view on one’s circumstances. For example, there is a sense in which being angry involves taking oneself to have been wronged, and fear seems to paint the scene as one of danger. A significant debate in contemporary philosophy of mind concerns...
»Vernunftkritik« klingt heute altmodisch, nach einer abgelegten Debatte aus den 1980er Jahren. Doch sind die Fragen, die in der eher unglückselig verlaufenden sogenannten »Foucault-Habermas-Debatte« gestellt wurden, nie wirklich abgegolten worden. Im Seminar werden wir daher die Rolle von Vernunftkritik in der ganzen Bandbreite der Kritischen Theorie – von Theodor W....
Die Frage, wie etwas wirklich ist, also ob Wissen und Diskurse Wirklichkeit abbilden oder diese Wirklichkeit performativ hervorbringen, ist eine der zentralen Fragen, wenn es gilt, das differenzierende Gewicht der Kategorien »Geschlecht« und »Rasse« zu bemessen. In diesem Seminar wollen wir zentrale Texte der besonders in den 1990 und frühen...
"Commodification", "propertization", and "objectification" are all concepts which serve both as descriptive tools for certain tendencies in the historical development of modern, capitalistic social relations and as critical diagnoses of their particular distortions or pathologies. In the seminar, we will first try to highlight the analytic specificity of each phenomenon...
Seit einigen Jahrzehnten – und heute mit neuer Vehemenz – gibt es von feministischer, postkolonialer und rassismustheoretischer Seite Interventionen in den philosophischen Kanon und das Selbstverständnis der Philosophie. Nicht nur stecken die klassischen philosophischen Texte voller misogyner und rassistischer Anekdoten und Andeutungen, sondern auch die scheinbar neutralen Begriffe und Themen,...
The aim of this course is to introduce some central methods and motifs in critical theory. In this seminar, the term “critical theory” is not limited to particular traditions or philosophical schools (like the “Frankfurt School”) but has a broader meaning: a theory is to be called ‘critical’ if it...
Michel Foucaults erster Band seines Projekts einer »Geschichte der Sexualität« ist längt ein moderner Klassiker der politischen Theorie/Philosophie. Sein seit Anfang der 1970er Jahre entwickelter Machtbegriff wird darin systematisch expliziert und zugleich in Auseinanderset-zung mit dem historischen Material seiner Untersuchungen weiterentwickelt. Mithilfe dieser methodologischen Begriffsentwicklung kommt Foucault dann zu seinen...
Dass Gewalt ein intrinsisches Element moderner westlicher Gesellschaften ist, wurde von vielen politischen Theoretiker*innen dargelegt. Was aber ist Gewalt? Ist die Verhinderung von Lebenschancen Gewalt? Ist Gewalt eine Struktur? Gibt es eine Gewalt der Normen? Wie verhalten sich Politik und Gewalt? Kann der Staat Schutz vor Gewalt bieten? Wie unterscheidet...
This dissertation addresses inter alia the problem of certain intertextual discontinuities across Thomas Hobbes’s oeuvre regarding the issue of ecclesiology. I find that these disparities did not result from a change in Hobbes’s private opinions, but from the regicide of 1649 as an event that liberated Hobbes to unveil his...
This dissertation addresses two distinct but related questions. First, how should we conceive of social freedom? Second, given this conception, what ideals would best satisfy the demands we are under as citizens and moral agents? In answer to the first question, I defend a novel account of social freedom, where...
This dissertation reorients political theory to the concepts of use and utility for a more critical and emancipatory perspective on contemporary communal life. The reorientation entails a recovery of Aristotle’s and Marx’s overlapping approaches to use, whose contemporary reception indexes the surprising alignment of critical political theory with economics. That...
To be tempted is to be conflicted, but the conflict is not one of oscillation between two good options. Rather, it is normally easy to act on temptation and difficult to act against it. But this is puzzling, because unless temptation is a force that acts on us, it’s not...