Mohan and Mark have made several interesting posts on the results of the 2011 PGR. Here I’d like to consider the makeup of the 20th century Continental Philosophy evaluators. Quoted self-descriptions come from their linked webpages. Bracketed comments are mine. Overall comments are below the fold, after the self-descriptions.
Evaluators: James Bohman, Steven Crowell, Maudemarie Clark, David Dudrick, Gordon Finlayson, Max de Gaynesford, Charles Guignon, Gary Gutting, Beatrice Han-Pile, Scott Jenkins, Pierre Keller, Michelle Kosch, Brian Leiter, Dean Moyar, Stephen Mulhall, Brian O’Connor, Peter Poellner, Bernard Reginster, Michael Rosen, Joseph Schear, Iain Thomson, Georgia Warnke, Mark Wrathall, Julian Young.
Steven Crowell, Rice: “twentieth century European philosophy, especially phenomenology (the philosophy of Edmund Husserl) and its development in Heidegger, existentialism (Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas), hermeneutics (Gadamer, Ricoeur) and post-structuralism (Derrida, Lyotard).”
Maudemarie Clark, UC Riverside: “Specializing in 19thcentury German philosophy, her main focus has been on the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.”
David Dudrick, Colgate: “Continental philosophy (especially Nietzsche and Foucault).”
Gordon Finlayson, Sussex: [social and political philosopher interested in 19th and 20th Century European philosophy and the history of philosophy. Books on Habermas and on Habermas and Rawls. Currently writing a book on Adorno.]
Max de Gaynesford, Reading, “specializes in philosophy of language and philosophy of mind.” [Books on “the meaning of the first person term”, on Putnam, and on McDowell.]
Charles Guignon, South Florida (USF): “Continental Philosophy (Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Existentialism, Post-structuralism, with a specialization in Heidegger), philosophical study of psychology and psychotherapy theories, and recent thought on the self and related matters (Charles Taylor, Bernard Williams, Alasdair MacIntyre, Paul Ricoeur, Michel Foucault, etc.).”
Gary Gutting, Notre Dame: “Contemporary French Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Religion.” [Gutting's recent Thinking the Impossible addresses Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, and includes some attention to Badiou.]
Beatrice Han-Pile, Essex: “Main interests: Foucault, phenomenology (mostly Heidegger and Sartre), Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, aesthetics. Current research: various papers on Heidegger, Foucault and Nietzsche. A book on medio-passivity.).”
Scott Jenkins, Kansas: “Kant, German Idealism, Nietzsche.”
Pierre Keller, UC Riverside: “Kant, 19th Century Philosophy, and Phenomenology.” [Husserl and Heidegger]
Michelle Kosch, Cornell: “Kant, and nineteenth and twentieth century continental philosophy, ethics, and moral psychology. Her recent Oxford University Press book, Freedom and Reason in Kant, Schelling, and Kierkegaard, examines Kierkegaard's relationship to German idealism and Kant, focusing on his account of moral agency and of the foundations of ethics.”
Brian Leiter, Chicago: “general jurisprudence (including its intersection with issues in metaphysics and epistemology), moral and political philosophy (in both Anglophone and Continental traditions), and the law of evidence.... He is presently finishing a book on the moral foundations of the law of religious liberty, as well as working on projects in moral psychology and meta-ethics (often in relation to Nietzsche) and 'realism' as a theme in political and legal theory.”
Dean Moyar, Johns Hopkins: “Kant and German Idealism (especially Hegel), political philosophy (especially the philosophical foundations of liberalism) and ethics (especially practical reason).”
Stephen Mulhall, Oxford: “Wittgenstein. Post-Kantian Philosophy (especially Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger). Post-Analytic Philosophy. Ethics. Philosophy of Religion. Philosophy and Literature. Philosophy and Film.”
Brian O’Connor, UC Dublin: “Critical Theory, German Idealism, Social Theory.”
Peter Poellner, Warwick: “19th and 20th century continental European philosophy, particularly in Nietzsche and the phenomenological thinkers, including Husserl, Scheler, Sartre, and early Heidegger, but also in phenomenologically inspired literary figures such as Robert Musil. I also continue to have a lively interest in those strands of current analytic philosophy which engage in substantial constitutive analysis of conscious intentionality.”
Bernard Reginster, Brown: “19th and 20th century continental philosophy, ethics, moral psychology. Professor Reginster's research focuses on issues in ethics, moral psychology, and philosophy of mind in 19th and 20th century continental philosophy. He has written a number of articles on Nietzsche and 19th century ethics, and a book, The Affirmation of Life. Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism (Harvard Press, 2006). He has also written on the thought of Schopenhauer, Freud, and Sartre..”
Michael Rosen, Harvard: “a wide variety of topics in philosophy, social theory and the history of ideas but I am particularly interested in 19th and 20th century European philosophy and in contemporary Anglo-American political philosophy…. At Harvard, I have taught a broad range of subjects, including courses on German Idealism, Hegel, Marx, Adorno, Rawls and Contemporary Political Philosophy.”
Joseph Schear, Oxford: “Post-Kantian European philosophy, especially phenomenology (Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty); philosophy of mind.”
Iain Thomson, New Mexico: “19th and 20th Century Continental philosophy, esp. Heidegger … various courses on contemporary continental philosophy, focusing on figures such as Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida, or on issues like the philosophical significance of death, technology, and nihilism.”
Georgia Warnke, UC Riverside: “critical theory, hermeneutics, democratic theory and issues of race, sex and gender… Recently she has written articles on Jürgen Habermas, Richard Rorty and Clifford Geertz. Recent graduate courses have focused on Habermas, Hans-Georg Gadamer and issues of identity. Undergraduate courses include courses on political philosophy, feminism and Marxism.”
Mark Wrathall, UC Riverside: “the existential and phenomenological traditions in philosophy. He is particularly interested in phenomenological accounts of perception, language, art, religion, and law…. Recent articles draw on the work of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Nietzsche, and Pascal.”
Julian Young, Wake Forest: “nineteenth- and twentieth-century German philosophy.”
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COMMENTS: I think it’s fair to say the list has a heavy German orientation. Of twenty-four evaluators, only two can be said to be specialists in contemporary French philosophy (Gutting and Han-Pile). The rest are Germanists, with Kant, Nietzsche and Heidegger being the key figures, with some Hegel and Husserl.
Some of the evaluators (Crowell, Dudrick, Guignon, Poellner, Schear, Thomson, Wrathall) mention French figures among their interests, although their stated major research focus is German philosophy. These evaluators mention Sartre four times (Crowell, Poellner, Schear, Wrathall), Merleau-Ponty twice (Crowell, Schear), Foucault twice (Dudrick, Guignon), Derrida twice (Crowell, Thomson), Levinas twice (Crowell, Thomson), and Lyotard once (Crowell).
These are however only mentions of secondary interests; a quick, non-systematic, but I believe accurate survey of their posted CVs show that none have consistent publishing records on these figures – at most an article here and there. Such consistent publishing is I think a good indicator of those cognizant of the relevant contemporary secondary literature – that is, that produced by people actively working in contemporary French philosophy.
What’s missing: evaluators who work on Deleuze, Irigaray, Kristeva, Badiou, Rancière, Balibar. The question of whether or not to include evaluators familiar with French-influenced feminism such as that of Judith Butler and the Australian “corporeal feminists” (Grosz, Gatens, Diprose), is complicated by the presence of a separate Feminist Philosophy specialty ranking.
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