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75Time out of Joint: Between Phenomenology and PoststructuralismParrhesia: A Critical Journal of Philosophy (9): 55-64. 2010.In this essay, I take off from Nathan Widder’s impressive book, Reflections on Time and Politics, by highlighting what I take to be one of the major internal differences within continental philosophy that Widder’s book helps to make manifest: that between phenomenology and post-structuralism (which includes the renewed interest in, and use of, Nietzsche and Bergson’s work by poststructuralist philosophers). While many deplore the use of umbrella terms like these, I hope to be able to proffer som…Read more
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75Phenomenology and naturalism: a hybrid and heretical proposalInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 24 (3): 393-412. 2016.In this paper I aim to develop a largely non-empirical case for the compatibility of phenomenology and naturalism. To do so, I will criticise what I take to be the standard construal of the relationship between transcendental phenomenology and naturalism, and defend a ‘minimal’ version of phenomenology that is compatible with liberal naturalism in the ontological register and with weak forms of methodological naturalism, the latter of which is understood as advocating ‘results continuity’, over …Read more
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70Review of Taylor Carman (ed.), Mark Hansen (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2005 (9). 2005.
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68Sartre's Legacy (edited book)Routledge. 2013.Examines Sartre's reception and legacy, both within France and beyond
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67Philosophy, Violence, MetaphorSophia 55 (1): 1-4. 2016.In this paper, I explore the complex ethical dynamics of violence and nonviolence in Mahāyāna Buddhism by considering some of the historical precedents and scriptural prescriptions that inform modern and contemporary Buddhist acts of self-immolation. Through considering these scripturally sanctioned Mahāyāna ‘case studies,’ the paper traces the tension that exists in Buddhist thought between violence and nonviolence, outlines the interplay of key Mahāyāna ideas of transcendence and altruism, and…Read more
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61Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty: Immanence, Univocity and PhenomenologyJournal of the British Society for Phenomenology 37 (3): 228-251. 2006.This paper seeks firstly to understand Deleuze’s main challenges to phenomenology, particularly as they are expressed in The Logic of Sense and Difference and Repetition. We then turn to a discussion of one of the few passages in which Deleuze and Guattari directly engage with Merleau-Ponty, which occurs in the chapter on art in What is Philosophy? In this text, he and Guattari offer a critique of what they call the “final avatar” of phenomenology – that is, the “fleshism” that Merleau- Ponty pr…Read more
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60Temporal naturalism: reconciling the “4Ms” and points of view within a robust liberal naturalismPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 19 (1): 1-21. 2020.In the past generation, various philosophers have been concerned with the so-called “placement problem” for naturalism. The problem has taken on the shorthand alliteration of the 4Ms, since Mind/Mentality, Meaning, Morality, and Modality/Mathematics are four important phenomena that are difficult to place within orthodox construals of naturalism, typified by physicalism and a methodological preference for ways of knowing associated with the natural sciences. In this paper I highlight the importa…Read more
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59Phenomenology and Virtue Ethics: Complementary Anti-theoretical Methodological and Ethical Trajectories?In K. Hermberg P. Gyllenhammer, Kevin Hermberg & Paul Gyllenhammer (eds.), Phenomenology and Virtue Ethics: Issues inPhenomenology and Hermeneutics, Continuum. 2013.In this paper, I argue that the negative injunctions against certain ways of conceiving of the ethico-political that we can draw explicitly from the methodological strictures of phenomenology are also consistent with some of the core more positive dimensions of contemporary virtue ethics (especially at the more anti-theoretical end of the virtue ethical spectrum), and that central aspects of virtue ethics are consistent with most of the explicit reflections on ethical matters proffered by canoni…Read more
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59Phenomenology, Naturalism and Non-reductive Cognitive ScienceAustralasian Philosophical Review 2 (2): 119-124. 2018.Volume 2, Issue 2, June 2018, Page 119-124.
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56Neither-Nor: Merleau-Ponty's Ontology in "The Intertwining/The Chiasm"In Ariane Mildenberg (ed.), Understanding Merleau-Ponty, Understanding Modernism, Bloomsbury Publishing Usa. 2018.Jean-Paul Sartre's moving eulogy for Merleau-Ponty on his death was entitled "Merleau-Ponty vivant" – Merleau-Ponty lives. And it is indeed difficult to deny that Merleau-Ponty’s thought remains a live and enduring part of the contemporary philosophical scene, in a manner that could not be said for his more famous contemporary. Despite the enduring significance of Merleau-Ponty and the voluminous writings about his work, the book that was intended to be his magnum opus, The Visible and the Invis…Read more
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55Why Tourette syndrome research needs philosophical phenomenologyPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 20 (4): 573-600. 2020.Despite a recent surge in publications on Tourette Syndrome, we still lack substantial insight into first-personal aspects of “what it is like” to live with this condition. This is despite the fact that developments in phenomenological psychiatry have demonstrated the scientific and clinical importance of understanding subjective experience in a range of other neuropsychiatric conditions. We argue that it is time for Tourette Syndrome research to tap into the sophisticated frameworks developed i…Read more
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55Russell, Ryle and Phenomenology: An Alternative Parsing of the WaysIn Aaron Preston (ed.), Interpreting the Analytic Tradition, Routledge. pp. 52-69. 2017.In this paper, we examine the historical relationship between phenomenology and the emerging analytic tradition. We pay particular attention to the reception of Husserl’s work by Russell, Moore, and others, and to some convergences between phenomenology and ordinary language philosophy, noted by Wittgenstein, Austin, and Ryle. Focusing on Russell and Ryle, we argue that the historical details suggest an alternative parsing of the ways to the “parting of the ways” narrative made famous by Dummett…Read more
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54Existentialist Methodology and Perspective: Writing the First-personIn Soren Overgaard & Giuseppina D'Oro (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Philosophical Methodology, Cambridge University Press. pp. 344-65. 2017.Without proposing anything quite so grandiose as a return to existentialism, in this paper we aim to articulate and minimally defend certain core existentialist insights concerning the first-person perspective, the relationship between theory and practice, and the mode of philosophical presentation conducive to best making those points. We will do this by considering some of the central methodological objections that have been posed around the role of the first-person perspective and “lived expe…Read more
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51In _Phenomenology, Naturalism and Empirical Science_, Jack Reynolds takes the controversial position that phenomenology and naturalism are compatible, and develops a hybrid account of phenomenology and empirical science. Though phenomenology and naturalism are typically understood as philosophically opposed to one another, Reynolds argues that this resistance is based on an understanding of transcendental phenomenology that is ultimately untenable and in need of updating. Phenomenology, as Reyno…Read more
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41Introduction: Merleau-Ponty’s Gordian knotContinental Philosophy Review 50 (1): 1-3. 2016.Whether or not Merleau-Ponty’s version of phenomenology should be considered a form of ‘transcendental’ philosophy is open to debate. Although the Phenomenology of Perception presents his position as a transcendental one, many of its features—such as its exploitation of empirical science—might lead to doubt that it can be. This paper considers whether Merleau-Ponty meets what I call the ‘transcendentalist challenge’ of defining and grounding claims of a distinctive transcendental kind. It begins…Read more
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38100 years of European philosophy since the Great War: crisis and reconfigurations (edited book)Springer. 2017.This book is a collection of specifically commissioned articles on the key continental European philosophical movements since 1914. It shows how each of these bodies of thought has been shaped by their responses to the horrors set in train by World War I, and considers whether we are yet ‘post-post-war’. The outbreak of World War I in August 1914,set in chain a series of crises and re-configurations, which have continued to shape the world for a century: industrialized slaughter, the end of colo…Read more
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38Habits of Mind: New Insights for Embodied Cognition from Classical Pragmatism and PhenomenologyEuropean Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy (2). 2022.Although pragmatism and phenomenology have both contributed significantly to the genealogy of so-called “4E” – embodied, embedded, enactive and extended – cognition, there is benefit to be had from a systematic comparative study of these roots. As existing 4E cognition literature has tended to emphasise one or the other tradition, issues remain to be addressed concerning their commonalities – and possible incompatibilities. We begin by exploring pragmatism and phenomenology’s shared focus on con…Read more
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35Philosophy and/or politicsIn Matthew Sharpe, Rory Jeffs & Jack Reynolds (eds.), 100 years of European philosophy since the Great War: crisis and reconfigurations, Springer. pp. 215-232. 2017.In this chapter, I revisit the question of the philosophical significance of the Great War upon the trajectory of philosophy in the twentieth century. While accounts of this are very rare in philosophy, and this is itself symptomatic, those that are given are also strangely implausible. They usually assert one of two things: that the War had little or no philosophical significance because most of the major developments had already begun, or—at the opposite extreme—they maintain that nothing was …Read more
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33Peculiar Access: Sartre, Self-knowledge, and the Question of the Irreducibility of the First-Person PerspectiveIn Talia Morag (ed.), Sartre and Analytic Philosophy, Routledge. pp. 84-100. 2023.In the debates on phenomenal consciousness that occurred over the last 20 years, Sartre’s analysis of pre-reflective consciousness has often been quoted in defence of a distinction between first- and third-personal modes of givenness that naturalists reject. This distinction aims both at determining the specificity of the access one has to their own thoughts, beliefs, intentions, or desires, and at justifying the particular privilege that one enjoys while making epistemic claims about their own …Read more
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28Jacques Derrida, Negotiations: Interventions and Interviews, 1971-2001 Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 23 (2): 94-96. 2003.
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26Grace de Laguna, Joel Katzav, and the Conservatism of Analytic PhilosophyAsian Journal of Philosophy (2): 1-13. 2023.In this paper, we consider the implications of Grace de Laguna and Joel Katzav's work for the charge of conservatism against the analytic tradition. We differentiate that conservatism into three kinds: starting place; path dependency; and modesty. We also think again about gender in philosophy, consider the positive account of speculative philosophy presented by de Laguna and Katzav in comparison to some other naturalist trajectories, and conclude with a brief Australian addendum that reflects o…Read more
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25Phenomenology, abduction, and argument: avoiding an ostrich epistemologyPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 22 (3): 557-574. 2022.Phenomenology has been described as a “non-argumentocentric” way of doing philosophy, reflecting that the philosophical focus is on generating adequate descriptions of experience. But it should not be described as an argument-free zone, regardless of whether this is intended as a descriptive claim about the work of the “usual suspects” or a normative claim about how phenomenology ought to be properly practiced. If phenomenology is always at least partly in the business of arguments, then it is w…Read more
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24Jacques Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason Reviewed by (review)Philosophy in Review 25 (5): 343-346. 2005.
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23Jacques Derrida, Eyes of the University: Right to Philosophy 2 Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 25 (5): 343-346. 2005.
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22Deleuze’s Other-StructureSymposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy/Revue canadienne de philosophie continentale 12 (1): 67-88. 2008.Deleuze suggests that his work grounds a new conception of the Other - the Other as expression of a possible world, as a structure that precedes any subsequent dialectical mediation, including the master-slave dialectic of social relations. I will argue, however, that the ethico-political injunction that Deleuze derives from his analysis of the ‘other-structure’ confronts a different problem. It commits Deleuze to either tacitly prescribing a romantic morality of difference that valorizes expres…Read more
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22Herman Rapaport, Later Derrida: Reading the Recent Work Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 24 (1): 47-49. 2004.
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21Paul Patton and John Protevi, eds., Between Deleuze and Derrida Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 23 (6): 399-402. 2003.
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20Chickening Out and the Idea of Continental PhilosophyInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 17 (2): 255-72. 2009.Despite its consistently mild tone, Simon Glendinning’s The Idea of Continental Philosophy is a provocative and uncompromising work. It is to be admired for this. Without “chickening out” (94), Glendinning purports to show that there can be no coherent philosophical understanding of continental philosophy as comprising any sort of distinct or unified tradition. Furthermore, he argues that the vast majority of us working in this so-called tradition actually know this at some level but shy away fr…Read more
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20Jacques Taminiaux, The Metamorphoses of Phenomenological Reduction Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 24 (4): 302-303. 2004.
Geelong, Victoria, Australia
Areas of Specialization
Metaphilosophy |
Continental Philosophy |
Perception |
Philosophy of Science, Miscellaneous |
Perception and Phenomenology |
PhilPapers Editorships
20th Century Philosophy |