J. Reese Faust

I am currently a Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at Howard University, where I teach courses introducing students to philosophy broadly, as well as more in-depth courses across my areas of interest.

I received my Ph.D. in Philosophy from The University of Memphis in 2022. My dissertation argued for a novel theory of legal interpretivism grounded in a broadly Hegelian social ontology and based on a theory of intercorporeal human dignity. Such a theory of human dignity, I argue, renders the lived experiences of marginalized peoples within a legal community to be legitimate sources of legal norms alongside constitutions, statutes, and caselaw. This project builds on previous work that advocated for an embodied legal subjectivity to better operationalize the promises on human rights law; for this work, I was awarded my LL.M. from Birkbeck, University of London. Prior to starting this research track, I obtained my B.A. in philosophy from Yale and my J.D. from Kentucky.

Current research focuses on explicating this theory of human embodied dignity in terms of American constitutional law; using insights from post-Heideggerian phenomenology to comprehend the limits of the law against lived experience (and vice versa) in adjudication; and examining how the theory of primitive accumulation can contribute to international law. Additionally, I am working on rethinking how populist rhetoric and discursive practices can re-configure constitutions.