Faculty Members

          Kelly Becker

          Andrew Burgess

          John Bussanich

          Mary Domski

          Russell Goodman

          Barbara Hannan

          Richard Hayes

          Adrian Johnston

          Brent Kalar

          Paul Katsafanas

          Paul Livingston

          John Taber

          Iain Thomson

 

 

Kelly Becker, Associate Professor

  • B.S. (University of Minnesota, '88)
  • B.A. (University of Pittsburgh, '91)
  • Ph.D. (UC, San Diego, '99)

Epistemology, Philosophy of Language and Mind, Quine.

Has recently published papers in Journal of Philosophy, Erkenntinis, History of Philosophy Quarterly, American Philosophical Quarterly (July, 2002 and January, 2004), Dialectica, Metaphilosophy, Philosophical Studies, Acta Analytica, Philosophia, and Mind (book review, forthcoming). Becker's article, "Reliabilism," is forthcoming on The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Prof. Becker's book, Epistemology Modalized, which includes critical discussions of extant versions of modal epistemologies and a defense of the thesis that knowledge is reliably formed, sensitive true belief, was published by Routledge in 2007.


 

Andrew Burgess, Professor

  • B.A. (St. Olaf '58)
  • Ph.D. (Yale '69)

Philosophy of Religion and Modern Christian Thought, Kierkegaard.

Has published in Religious Studies, International Journal For Philosophy of Religion, Kierkegaard-Studiet, Christian Century, Journal of Religious Studies, and the International Kierkegaard Commentary. Author of Passion, "Knowing How" and Understanding: An Essay on the Concept of Faith, (Scholars Press, 1975). "Forstand in the Swenson-Lowrie Correspondence and in the 'Metaphysical Caprice'," in Philosophical Fragments and Johannes Climacus. Volume 7 of International Kierkegaard Commentary. Ed., Robert L. Perkins. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1994, pp. 109-28. "Kierkegaard on Homiletics and the Genre of the Sermon," in The Journal of Communication and Religion, volume 17 (September 1994), pp. 17-31.


 

John Bussanich, Professor and Chair

  • B.A. (Stanford '72)
  • Ph.D. (Stanford '82)

Greek Philosophy, Comparative Philosophy & Mysticism (ancient western and Indian traditions).

 

Professor Bussanich's homepage


 

Mary Domski, Assistant Professor and Graduate Placement Director

  • B.A. (University of Pennsylvania '97)
  • M.S.Ed. (University of Pennsylvania '98)
  • M.A. (University of Leeds '99)
  • Ph.D. (Indiana University '03)

History of Modern Philosophy, Newtonian Science and the Scientific Revolution, Kant, History and Philosophy of Science (especially during the seventeenth century).

Prof. Domski is a co-editor (with Michael Dickson) of Discourse on a New Method: Reinvigorating the Marriage of History and Philosophy of Science (Open Court, forthcoming), a collection of essays in honor of Michael Friedman's work in the history and philosophy of science. She is the author of papers on Newton's philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of experiment, Locke's account of geometrical reasoning, and Kant's notions of infinity and unity. Her papers and reviews have appeared (or will soon appear) in Early Science and Medicine, Locke Studies, Philosophy of Science, Proceedings of the Tenth International Kant Congress, Physics in Perspective, and Studies in History and Philosophy of Science.

Prof. Domski's research is currently focused on the interplay between the natural sciences and philosophy during the early modern period. She also has a growing interest in the relationship between history and philosophy.

Recently, some of her time has also been spent working as the Principal Investigator on the NSF-sponsored Ethics Fellows Pilot Program. The program's website is located at: www.unm.edu/~ethicfel.

Professor Domski's homepage


 

Russell Goodman, Regents Professor

  • B.A. (Univ. of Pennsylvania '66)
  • M.A. (Oxford '70)
  • Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins '71)

Wittgenstein, American Philosophy, Aesthetics.

Author of American Philosophy and the Romantic Tradition, (Cambridge, 1990). Pragmatism: A Contemporary Reader, (Routledge, 1995) Wittgenstein and William James (Cambridge, 2002), Contending with Stanley Cavell, (Oxford, 2005), Pragmatism: Critical Concepts in Philosophy, 4 vols. (Routledge, 2005). Working on a history of American philosophy before pragmatism for a new series from Oxford University Press. Publications in The Oxford Handbook of American Philosophy, History of Philosophy Quarterly, Philosophy East and West, Journal of the History of Philosophy, Emerson Society Quarterly, Metaphilosophy. Journal of the History of Ideas. Contributor to the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Transcendentalism and William James) and to volumes on Neoplatonism, American and European National Identity, and Wittgenstein.

Project Director for NEH summer institute on Emerson in 2003 and for NEH summer seminars on Emerson and Pragmatism in 2005 and 2007 respectively.


 

Barbara Hannan, Associate Professor

  • B.A. (Randolph-Macon Woman's College, '79)
  • J.D. (University of Arizona, '82)
  • Ph.D. (University of Arizona, '89)

Major research areas: philosophy of mind and philosophical psychology, metaphysics. Other areas of competence: philosophy of language, philosophy of science, epistemology, philosophy of law, first-order logic.

Author of The Riddle of the World: A Reconsideration of Schopenhauer's Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2009.

Author of Subjectivity And Reduction: An Introduction to the Mind-Body Problem (Westview Press, 1994). Contributor to Love Analyzed (Westviow Press, 1997).

Recent Articles/Critical Notices/Reviews in International Journal of Law and Psychiatry. Mind, and Ancient Philosophy.

Retrieve Prof. Hannan's Personal Profile.

Access Prof. Hannan's Course description for Metaphysics.

Access Prof. Hannan's Course description for Introduction to Philosophical Problems.

 


 

Richard Hayes, Associate Professor

  • B.A. (Carelton University '72)
  • M.A. (Toronto '74)
  • Ph.D. (Toronto '82)

History of Indian Buddhist scholasticism in the context of Indian philosophy; Buddhist logic and epistemology; History of metaphysics in India; Buddhist psychology and Jungian analytic psychology; Sanskrit grammar and Indian philosophies of language.

Author of Dignaga on the interpretation of signs. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988; and Land of No Buddha: Reflections of a Sceptical Buddhist. Birmingham: Windhorse Publications, 1998.

Subject editor of Buddhist Philosophy section of Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy, second edition. Subject editor of Indian Buddhism section of Curzon-Routledge Encyclopedia of Buddhism. Subject editor of Indian and Tibetan Philosophy section of Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Articles published in Journal of the American Oriental Society, Journal of Indian Philosophy, Journal of the American Academy of Religions, and Tetsugaku.

Professor Hayes's Homepage


 

Adrian Johnston, Assistant Professor

  • B.A. (University of Texas at Austin, 1996)
  • Ph.D. (State University of New York at Stony Brook, 2001)

Major areas of research interest: Nineteenth and twentieth-century European philosophy (particularly German idealism, Marxism, and post-war French thought), contemporary Continental philosophy (especially Badiou, Žižek, and Malabou), Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis, political theory, and the neurosciences.

Professor Johnston is the author of Time Driven: Metapsychology and the Splitting of the Drive (Northwestern University Press, 2005), Žižek’s Ontology: A Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity (Northwestern University Press, 2008), and Badiou, Žižek, and Political Transformations: The Cadence of Change (Northwestern University Press, 2009 [forthcoming]). With Catherine Malabou, he is presently co-authoring a book on affects reconsidered at the intersection of psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and philosophy (tentatively entitled Auto-affection and Emotional Life: Psychoanalysis and Neurology). And, he is currently working on a project addressing contemporary forms of materialism, which includes extended engagements with the works of Lacan, Badiou, and Meillassoux (tentatively entitled A Weak Nature Alone: Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism).

Professor Johnston has published or has pieces forthcoming in such journals as American Imago, Anamorphosis, Angelaki, Clinical Studies: International Journal of Psychoanalysis, Continental Philosophy Review, Diacritics, Filozofski Vestnik, Idealistic Studies, International Journal of Žižek Studies, Journal for Lacanian Studies, Journal of European Psychoanalysis, Lacanian Ink, The Letter: Lacanian Perspectives on Psychoanalysis, New Centennial Review, Owl of Minerva, Philosophy Today, Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, Problemi, Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought, Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society, Psychoanalytic Studies, Re-turn: A Journal of Lacanian Studies, South Atlantic Review, Theory and Event, Theory and Psychology, and Yale French Studies.


 

Brent Kalar, Assistant Professor

  • B.A. (University of Minnesota, 1993)
  • Ph.D. (Harvard, 2003)

Interests: German Philosophy from Kant to Nietzsche, Aesthetics, and Ethics.

Professor Kalar is the author of The Demands of Taste in Kant's Aesthetics (Continuum, 2006).

Other Recent Publications: "The Naive and the Natural: Schiller's Influence on Nietzsche's Early Aesthetics" History of Philosophy Quarterly, 25:4, 359-377, October 2008.

He is currently completing a monograph exploring the aestheticist and perfectionist strains in the thought of the early Nietzsche.


 

Paul Katsafanas, Assistant Professor

  • B.A. (Vassar College, 2001)
  • Ph.D. (Harvard, 2008)

Moral Philosophy, Philosophy of Action, Nineteenth-Century Philosophy.

Publications include:

“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.

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

Professor Katsafanas's homepage


 

Paul Livingston, Assistant Professor

  • A.B. (Harvard University, 1997)
  • M. Phil. (University of Cambridge, 1998)
  • Ph.D. (UC, Irvine, 2002)

History of Twentieth Century Philosophy, Phenomenology, Philosophy of Mind and Language.

Professor Livingston is the author of two books: Philosophical History and the Problem of Consciousness (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and Philosophy and the Vision of Language (Routledge, 2008). He has also recently published in Inquiry, Synthese, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Philosophical Investigations, and Continental Philosophy Review. Prof. Livingston works on the philosophy of mind and language from a historical perspective, focusing on the history of twentieth century philosophy, both analytic and continental.

Professor Livingston's homepage


 

John Taber, Professor

  • B.A. (Kansas, '71)
  • Ph.D. (Hamburg, '79)

Classical Indian Philosophy, 19th Century German Philosophy.

Has published in The Journal of Indian Philosophy, Philosophy East and West, Kantstudien, Journal of the American Oriental Society, and other journals. Author of Transformative Philosophy: A Study of Sankara, Fichte, and Heidegger, (Univ. of Hawaii Press, 1983) and A Hindu Critique of Buddhist Epistemology: Kumarila on Perception (Routledge, 2005). Articles on Indian Philosophy in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1995.


 

Iain Thomson, Associate Professor and Graduate Director

  • B.A. (UC Berkeley, '91)
  • M.A. (UC San Diego, '94)
  • Graduate Work (UC Irvine, '94)
  • Ph.D. (UC San Diego, '99)

Continental philosophy since Kant (esp. 19th and 20th century).

Publications include: "Can I Die? Derrida on Heidegger on Death," Philosophy Today 43:1 (1999), 29-42; "From the Question Concerning Technology to the Quest for a Democratic Technology: Heidegger, Marcuse, Feenberg," Inquiry 43:2 (2000), 203-16; "Ontotheology? Understanding Heidegger's Destruktion of Metaphysics," International Journal of Philosophical Studies 8:3 (2000), 297-327; "What's Wrong with Technological Essentialism? A Response to Feenberg," Inquiry 43:4 (2000), 429-44; "Heidegger on Ontological Education, or: How We Become What We Are," Inquiry 44:3 (2001), 243-68; "The Philosophical Fugue: Understanding the Structure and Goal of Heidegger's Beiträge," Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 34:1 (2003), 57-73; "Interpretation as Self-Creation: Nietzsche on the Pre-Platonics," Ancient Philosophy 23:1 (2003), pp. 195-213; "Heidegger and the Politics of the University," Journal of the History of Philosophy 41:4 (2003), pp. 515-542; "Ontology and Ethics at the Intersection of Phenomenology and Environmental Philosophy," Inquiry 47:4 (2004), pp. 380-412; “Heidegger and National Socialism,” in Hubert L. Dreyfus and Mark A. Wrathall, eds, A Companion to Heidegger (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), pp. 32-48; “Deconstructing the Hero,” in Jeff McLaughlin, ed., Comics as Philosophy (University Press of Mississippi, forthcoming); "Heidegger's Perfectionist Philosophy of Eduation in Being and Time," forthcoming in Continental Philosophy Review 37:4 (2004); “Phenomenology and Environmental Philosophy,” chapter in Hubert L. Dreyfus and Mark A. Wrathall, eds, A Companion to Phenomenology and Existentialism (Oxford: Blackwell, forthcoming 2006).

For electronic offprints of some of these publications (which can be read/printed with Adobe Acrobat), please visit Professor Thomson's Homepage. For offprints of his other articles, please e-mail Professor Thomson directly.

His book, Heidegger on Ontotheology: Technology and the Politics of Education, from Cambridge University Press, can be ordered from Barnes & Noble or Amazon.com.

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