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11Capitalism and the Far Right. Revisiting the Pollock-Neumann Debate in the Era of Authoritarian EthnonationalismPhilosophy and Public Issues - Filosofia E Questioni Pubbliche. forthcoming.Download.
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11PWL for the Twenty-First Century Academic PhilosopherAmerican Association of Philosophy Teachers Studies in Pedagogy 6 9-33. 2021.In this essay, I sketch a third possibility between teaching PWL solely as history of philosophy (which seems to inescapably pull against its own conception of philosophizing), and the fascinating recent attempts by scholars to experiment with introducing modes of teaching and assessment which would reactivate ancient spiritual exercises within the modern university. This third way takes for granted that, for the foreseeable future (and if academic philosophy widely survives the twenty-first cen…Read more
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11Good reasons to philosophize: On Hadot, Cooper, and ancient philosophical protrepticMetaphilosophy. forthcoming.This paper reassesses the Cooper-Hadot debate surrounding how students are converted to philosophy as a way of life (section 1) through engagement with philosophical protreptics. In section 2, the paper identifies the core “argument from finality” in philosophical protreptics seeking to convert non-philosophers to philosophy, starting from the universal human interest in securing eudaimonia. In line with Cooper, this argument seeks to persuade prospective students on rational grounds, so that th…Read more
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11Golden calf: Deleuze’s Nietzsche in the time of TrumpThesis Eleven 163 (1): 71-88. 2021.This paper examines how Gilles Deleuze addresses, and fail to address, the darker strata in Nietzsche’s work which has enabled his work to be claimed by almost every far-right European political movement since the 1890s to the Alt-Right today. Part I argues that four rhetorical strategies are present which serve to domesticate Nietzsche’s ideas concerning class and caste, race and sexuality, and his opposition to forms of liberalism, democracy, feminism and socialism: avoiding directly political…Read more
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10Zizek and Politics: A Critical IntroductionEdinburgh University Press. 2010.In Zizek and Politics, Geoff Boucher and Matthew Sharpe go beyond standard introductions to spell out a new approach to reading Zizek, one that can be highly critical as well as deeply appreciative. They show that Zizek has a raft of fundamental positions that enable his theoretical positions to be put to work on practical problems. Explaining these positions with clear examples, they outline why Zizek's confrontation with thinkers such as Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze has so radically changed h…Read more
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9On the dumb sublimity of law: A critique of the post-structuralist orientation towards ethicsMinerva - An Internet Journal of Philosophy 7 (1). 2003.This paper stages an argument in five premises: 1. That the insight to which post-structuralist ethics responds—which is that there is an 'unmistakable particularity of concrete persons or social groups'—leads theorists who base their moral theory upon it into a problematic parallel to that charted by Kant in his analysis of the sublime. 2. That Kant's analysis of the sublime divides its experience into what I call two 'moments', the second of which involves a reflexive move which the post-struc…Read more
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9Philosophy as a way of life: from antiquity to modernityBloomsbury Academic. 2021.The idea of philosophy as a 'way of life' is not a new one. From the first recorded philosophy by Plato, there has been a tradition of thinking about philosophy as pointing us towards the good life, happiness and an ethical existence. But where does this notion that philosophy has anything to offer in terms of guiding us in how to live and live well come from? In this first ever introduction to philosophy as a way of life, Matthew Sharpe and Michael Ure take us us through the history of the idea…Read more
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9Toula Nicolocapoulos, The Radical Critique of Liberalism: In Memory of a VisionCritical Horizons 10 (3): 430-435. 2009.
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9Rhetorical Action in Rektoratsrede: Calling Heidegger's GefolgschaftPhilosophy and Rhetoric 51 (2): 176-201. 2018.ABSTRACT This article analyzes Heidegger's rhetoric in his most famous political address, the Rektoratsrede, which he delivered at the University of Freiburg on 27 May 1933. After I set out the political and philosophical kairos of the Rektoratsrede by drawing on Heidegger's contemporary lectures, letters, and Ponderings, in part 2 I use classical rhetorical resources and Heidegger's philosophy of temporality in Sein und Zeit to analyze the arrangement of his speech. In part 3, I examine two key…Read more
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8On Roland Boer’s Marxism and theologyCritical Research on Religion 4 (2): 171-178. 2016.This piece aims to provide a synoptic introduction to Boer’s claims in the five volumes of Marxism and Theology. Obviously, such an account must miss many important nuances across the host of critical readings Boer assembles, guided by his broadly Jamesonian manner of reading the texts with a view to their biblical and theological claims. Nevertheless, by aiming at a synoptic view of a truly compendious contribution to scholarship, it is hoped that the piece will provide assistance to readers, a…Read more
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8Understanding PsychoanalysisRoutledge. 2008."Understanding Psychoanalysis" presents a broad introduction to the key concepts and developments in psychoanalysis and its impact on modern thought. Charting pivotal moments in the theorization and reception of psychoanalysis, the book provides a comprehensive account of the concerns and development of Freud's work, as well as his most prominent successors, Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan.The work of these leading psychoanalytic theorists has greatly influenced thinking across other disciplines…Read more
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8Pierre Hadot (1922-2010)In James Fieser & Bradley Dowden (eds.), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, . pp. 1--14. 2011.
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8Retuning Orpheus' Lyre: The classical heritage's antidotes to cultural pessimismAustralian Humanist, The 120 10. 2016.Sharpe, Matthew Let me begin with words from a different, more optimistic time: 'For it may be truly affirmed to the honour of these times, and in a virtuous emulation with antiquity, that this great building of the world had never throughlights made in it, till the age of us and our fathers. For although they had knowledge of the antipodes,... yet that might be by demonstration, and not in fact; and if by travel, it requireth the voyage but of half the globe. But to circle the earth, as the hea…Read more
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7Zizek's communism and in defence of lost causesInternational Journal of Žižek Studies 4 (2): 1-7. 2010.
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7The philosopher’s courtly love? Leo strauss, eros, and the lawLaw and Critique 17 (3): 357-388. 2006.This essay poses a critical response to Strauss’ political philosophy that takes as its primary object Strauss’ philosophy of Law. It does this by drawing on recent theoretical work in psychoanalytic theory, conceived after Jacques Lacan as another, avowedly non-historicist theory of Law and its relation to eros. The paper has four parts. Part I, ‘The Philosopher’s Desire: Making an Exception, or “The Thing Is...’’’, recounts Strauss’ central account of the complex relationship between philosoph…Read more
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71750, Casualty of 1914: Lest We ForgetIn Matthew Sharpe, Rory Jeffs & Jack Reynolds (eds.), 100 years of European philosophy since the Great War: crisis and reconfigurations, Springer. 2017.“1750”, the French enlightenment, was a retrospective casualty of the catastrophes set in chain by 1914. German Kulturpessimismus, heightened by the war and enflamed by the abuse of liberal ideals at the Treaty table at Versailles, has since been disseminated through, amongst other things, the intellectual normalisation of Heidegger’s metapolitical, radically antimodern “history of Being”, and more recently Carl Schmitt’s work. The paper recalls that the French enlightenment, a divided period of…Read more
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6On the grounding of moral value, or is a post-Kantian, post-Christian morality possible?Minerva - An Internet Journal of Philosophy 5 (1). 2001.This paper stages a consideration of Slavoj Zizek’s recent texts discussing the Christian ethics of agape. I read Zizek’s ‘turn’ to Christian ethics as not a violation of his earlier Kantianism, but as an attempt to overcome two related problems which haunt Kantian deontological moral philosophy. The first is the problem that Kant severs morality too totally from the realm of ‘pathological’ inclination, and does not offer us a realistic depiction of moral psychology. The second is that the forma…Read more
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5Purloined Letters—Lacan avec StraussIn Jeffrey Alan Bernstein & Jade Schiff (eds.), Leo Strauss and contemporary thought: reading Strauss outside the lines, State University of New York Press. pp. 29-50. 2021.
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5Toula Nicolocapoulos, The Radical Critique of Liberalism: In Memory of a Vision (review)Critical Horizons 10 (3): 430-435. 2009.
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5Introduction: European Thought, After the DelugeIn Matthew Sharpe, Rory Jeffs & Jack Reynolds (eds.), 100 years of European philosophy since the Great War: crisis and reconfigurations, Springer. 2017.The Great War, as it was known until 1939, set in chain a series of catastrophes and crises that have largely defined the long twentieth century: economic, political, cultural, and metaphysical. Philosophy was not unaffected, either within academe, or more widely. Nearly each of the major philosophical movements, from analytic philosophy through to post-structuralism, was directly or indirectly formed in response to the civilizational crisis the Great War inaugurated, and different perceptions o…Read more
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5Slavoj Žižek: A Little Piece of the RealRoutledge. 2004.Slavoj Zizek has emerged as the pre-eminent European cultural theorist of the last decade and has been described as the ultimate Marxist/Lacanian cultural studies scholar. His large and growing body of work has generated considerable controversy, yet his texts are not structured as standard academic tomes. In Slavoj Zizek: A Little Piece of the Real, Matthew Sharpe undertakes the difficult task of drawing out an evolving argument from all of Zizek's texts from 1989 to 2001, and reads them as the…Read more
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4Philosophy as a way of life: history, dimensions, directionsBloomsbury Academic. 2021.The idea of philosophy as a 'way of life' is not a new one. From the first recorded philosophy by Plato, there has been a tradition of thinking about philosophy as pointing us towards the good life, happiness and an ethical existence. But where does this notion that philosophy has anything to offer in terms of guiding us in how to live and live well come from? In this first ever introduction to philosophy as a way of life, Matthew Sharpe and Michael Ure take us us through the history of the idea…Read more
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3Solitaire/Solidaire: Camus, Contemplation, and the Vita MixtaTelos: Critical Theory of the Contemporary 2021 (196): 31-53. 2021.
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3Hadot, PierreIn James Fieser & Bradley Dowden (eds.), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, . 2011.
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1Stoic virtue ethicsIn S. van Hooft, N. Athanassoulis, J. Kawall, J. Oakley & L. van Zyl (eds.), The handbook of virtue ethics, Acumen Publishing. 2014.
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1On The Grounding Of Moral Value, Or Is A Post-kantian, Post-christian Morality Possible?Minerva 5 118-137. 2001.This paper stages a consideration of Slavoj Zizek’s recent texts discussing the Christian ethics of agape. Iread Zizek’s ‘turn’ to Christian ethics as not a violation of his earlier Kantianism, but as an attempt toovercome two related problems which haunt Kantian deontological moral philosophy. The first is theproblem that Kant severs morality too totally from the realm of ‘pathological’ inclination, and does notoffer us a realistic depiction of moral psychology. The second is that the formal em…Read more
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This paper stages an argument in five premises:1. That the insight to which post-structuralist ethics responds—which is that there is an 'unmistakableparticularity of concrete persons or social groups'—leads theorists who base their moral theory upon itinto a problematic parallel to that charted by Kant in his analysis of the sublime.2. That Kant's analysis of the sublime divides its experience into what I call two 'moments', the secondof which involves a reflexive move which the post-structural…Read more
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Wherewith to draw us to the left and right : on reading Heidegger in the new millenniumIn Gegory Fried (ed.), Confronting Heidegger: A Critical Dialogue on Politics and Philosophy, Rowman & Littlefield International. 2019.
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Aesthetics: On Levinas’ ShadowColloquy 9 29-46. 2005.Emmanuel Levinas aesthetics has been critically discussed much less than other components of his philosophy. In one way, this is not surprising, given Levinas wider post-war project. Nevertheless, in the late 1940s, the very time his influential later philosophy was taking shape, Levinas published a series of papers on literary criticism, and on the nature of art. istents and Existence, the text where Levinas first announces his project of leaving the climate of Heideggers thought, contains…Read more
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Deakin UniversityRegular Faculty
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Areas of Specialization
Social and Political Philosophy |
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |
Continental Philosophy |