Philosophy Publications: 2015
Faculty in the Department of Philosophy shared thoughts about their recent work.
Zed Adams
Zed Adams, Associate Professor of Philosophy, recently published On the Genealogy of Color: A Case Study in Historicized Conceptual Analysis (Routledge, 2015). About this new book, Zed shared the following:
“In this book, I argue against the idea that philosophical problems are timeless and ahistorical. I do this by giving a detailed case study of the historically contingent presuppositions underlying one contemporary philosophical debate (namely, the problem of color realism). My ultimate goal is to challenge the assumption that philosophical concepts are ‘autonomous’ in the sense of being independent of broader developments in our knowledge of the world. The concept of color has seemed like something timeless and ahistorical to many philosophers, such that if I can show that it rests upon historically contingent presuppositions, we should be open to the possibility of that being more generally true.”
Other publications include “On the Ontology of Mechanically Reproduced Artworks” (Popular Music and Society, 2015) and “Against Moral Intellectualism” (Philosophical Investigations, 2014).
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Bio | Adams received his PhD from the University of Chicago. Adams’s work focuses on moral skepticism, the philosophy of color, and realism in art. He explores the relationship between variation in judgment or perception in different domains (moral, color, aesthetic) and the possibility of truth and knowledge in these domains. Currently he is working on a project about the significance of recording for how we make and appreciate music, with a special focus on the use of sampling in hip hop.
Other publication updates from the department:
Cinzia Arruzza
Cinzia Arruzza, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, recently published PLOTINUS Ennead II.5: On What Is Potentially and What Actually (Parmenides Publishing, 2015) and “Gender as Social Temporality: Butler (and Marx)” (Historical Materialism, 2015).
Other publications include Dangerous Liaisons, Marriages and Divorces of Marxism and Feminism (Merlin Press, 2013).
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Bio | Arruzza received her Ph.D. from the University of Rome Tor Vergata and subsequently studied at the universities of Fribourg (Switzerland), and Bonn (Germany), where she was the recipient of an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellowship. Her research interests include ancient metaphysics and political thought, Plato, Aristotle, Neoplatonism, feminist theory and Marxism.
Jay Bernstein
Jay (J.M.) Bernstein, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, recently published Torture and Dignity: An Essay on Moral Injury (University of Chicago Press, 2015).
Other publications include the the books Against Voluptuous Bodies (Stanford University Press, 2006), Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2002), and the essay “’the celestial Antigone, the most resplendent figure ever to have appeared on earth’: Hegel’s Feminism” (Feminist Readings of Antigone, 2010).
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Bio | Bernstein received his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh in 1975. For Bernstein, philosophy means interrogating the foundations of people’s life together, how people make sense of the world, and how people fail. His research interests include ethical modernism and political atrocity, modernism in art and philosophy, and idealism and embodiment.
Alice Crary
Alice Crary, Associate Professor of Philosophy, recently published Inside Ethics: On the Demands of Moral Thought (Harvard University Press, 2015), as well as the article “Feminist Thought and Rational Authority: Getting Things in Perspective” (New Literary History, 2015).
Other publications include the book Beyond Moral Judgment (Harvard University Press, 2007), which challenges received images of the nature and difficulty of moral thought by bringing out the moral dimension of all language; and, the article “Imagination and Advocacy” (The Point magazine, 2013).
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Bio | Crary received her Ph.D. in 1999 from University of Pittsburgh. Crary is a moral philosopher and the author of articles on moral philosophy (including issues in metaethics, moral psychology and normative ethics), philosophy and literature, animals and ethics, philosophy and cognitive disability, philosophy and feminism, as well as on figures such as Austin, Cavell, Diamond, Foot, Murdoch and Wittgenstein.
Simon Critchley
Simon Critchley, Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy, recently published Memory Theater (Other Press, 2015). The book was named one of Publisher’s Weekly’s best books of 2015, and was reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, among other publications.
Other publications include Stay Illusion! The Hamlet Doctrine (Random House, 2013), Faith of the Faithless: Experiments in Political Theology (Verso Books, 2012), and Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance (Verso Books, 2013).
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Bio | Critchley received his PhD from the University of Essex. He writes about the history of philosophy, political theory, religion, ethics, aesthetics, literature and theatre. He moderates the New York Times column The Stone. Visit Critchley’s website to learn more about his work.
Selections of NSSR publications from 2015:
Anthropology | Economics | Historical Studies | Liberal Studies | Philosophy | Politics | Psychology | Sociology