Paul Katsafanas, Assistant Professor

 

RESEARCH INTERESTS

I work on topics at the interface of ethics, philosophy of action, and philosophical psychology. The questions upon which I am currently focusing are:

• Is it possible to derive normative conclusions from facts about the nature of reflective agency?
• How should we understand the notion of reflective agency? In particular, how do non-conscious aspects of our mental economies complicate traditional models of reflective agency?

I also have strong interests in nineteenth-century philosophy. Much of my work in nineteenth-century philosophy focuses on the versions of the above questions that occupied philosophers of the time. For example, in recent work I argue that by mining Nietzsche’s philosophical psychology, we can advance contemporary attempts to ground ethics in action theory. (See my personal website for more details.)

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

“Deriving Ethics from Action: A Nietzschean Version of Constitutivism,” forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

“Activity and Passivity in Reflective Agency,” provisionally forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Volume 6, Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford University Press.

“The Problem of Normative Authority in Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche,” forthcoming in a volume of Nietzsche and moral philosophy, David Owen and Aaron Ridley (eds.), Oxford University Press.

“Philosophical Psychology as a Basis for Ethics,” International Studies in Philosophy: Conference Proceedings of the North American Nietzsche Society, forthcoming in volume 42.3.

“Nietzsche’s Philosophical Psychology,” in John Richardson and Ken Gemes (eds.), The Oxford Handbook on Nietzsche, Oxford University Press, forthcoming.

“Nietzsche on Agency and Self-Ignorance,” International Studies in Philosophy: Conference Proceedings of the North American Nietzsche Society, forthcoming in volume 40.3.

“Nietzsche’s Theory of Mind: Consciousness and Conceptualization,” European Journal of Philosophy 13 (April 2005), 1-31.

SELECTED RECENT PRESENTATIONS

"Nietzsche's Relevance for Contemporary Ethical Theory,'" Invited Symposium, APA Pacific Division, April 2010

“Activity and Passivity in Reflective Agency”
     Sixth Annual Metaethics Workshop, Universityof Wisconsin-Madison, September 2009.
     Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress, University of Colorado-Boulder, August 2009.
     Texas Tech University, November 2008.

“Philosophical Psychology as a Basis for Ethics”
     APA Pacific Division, North American Nietzsche Society Session, April 2009.

“The Problem of Normative Authority in Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche”
     Workshop on Nietzsche and Kantian Ethics, University of Southampton, April 2009.

TEACHING INTERESTS

So far, I have taught Ethical Theory, Bioethics, Professional Ethics (Business and Bioethics) and a graduate seminar on Ethics and Action Theory.