Teaching

The Critique of Ontotheology (Spring 2025): According to Martin Heidegger, metaphysics has failed to confront its own basic question, namely that of the meaning (or truth) of being, on account of an occlusion of the significance of two differences. The first difference is between onto-logic and theo-logic, or between, on the one hand, what, formally, entities are as such, and, on the other hand, the explanatory principle that accounts for it that entities as a whole exist at all. Heidegger claims that metaphysics characteristically attempts to overcome this difference in a unified “onto-theo-logical” account of the being of entities. The second difference is between, on the one hand, the being of entities (a topic common to onto-logic and theo-logic), and, on the other hand, being itself. Heidegger claims that metaphysics characteristically forgets this second difference as it struggles to overcome the first.
This course will critically consider Heidegger’s influential and sweeping “deconstruction” of the tradition, reading historical texts alongside Heidegger’s essays and commentaries, with a view to: understanding the relationship between these two differences; assessing the extent to which the distinctions can be drawn univocally (or analogically) across dramatic historical changes in the way philosophers have understood the fundamental concepts of metaphysics; weighing (against the testimony of the tradition and against alternative narratives) the plausibility of Heidegger’s claim that the distinctions have been mistreated or neglected and thus that the question of being has gone unasked; and testing the resources Heidegger purports to uncover for ameliorating this state of affairs. Heidegger thinks a proper appreciation of the question of being will have deep cultural, existential, and theological consequences for us; we will consider, finally, what these consequences may be. This will require in turn reflecting on how such themes as anxiety, fallenness, grace, and thankfulness could be implicated in the question of being, as well as on how being itself can be understood to take place as an event. In addition to Heidegger’s own works, readings will include short texts by (some but not all of) Aristotle, Avicenna, Aquinas, Scotus, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Reinhold, Hölderlin, Hegel, Rosenzweig, Derrida. (Syllabus available by request.)

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (Winter 2023, with Matthew Boyle): close reading of first Critique and related materials

Critique of Humanism (Spring 2023, with Candace Vogler): readings from Hegel, Marx, Freud, Lacan, Fanon, Althusser, Spillers

Introduction to Marx (Fall 2023, with Anton Ford): readings from Capital vol. 1, German Ideology, 1844 Manuscripts, Manifesto, etc., and supplementary material by Aristotle, Feuerbach, Engels, Lenin

Introduction to Metaphysics and Epistemology (Spring 2024, with Ben Callard): topics including realism and anti-realism, causation, the mind/body problem, free will, time, God, justification, skepticism, internalism and externalism; readings from Russell, Nagel, Lewis, Gettier, and others

The Fate of Autonomy (Winter 2025, with Maya Krishnan): readings from Kant, Hegel, Fanon, Adorno, Jaeggi, Butler, Frankfurt, Korsgaard, Enoch, and others

Introduction to the Philosophy of Law (Winter 2026, with Lisa van Alstyne, anticipated): readings from Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Hart, Dworkin, and others