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2361Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty: Immanence, Univocity and PhenomenologyJournal of the British Society of Phenomenology 37 (3): 228-51. 2006.This paper will seek firstly to understand Deleuze’s main challenges to phenomenology, particularly as they are expressed in The Logic of Sense and What is Philosophy?, although reference will also be made to Pure Immanence and Difference and Repetition. We will then turn to a discussion of one of the few passages in which Deleuze directly engages 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 “fi…Read more
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1472Revaluing the behaviorist ghost in enactivism and embodied cognitionSynthese 198 (6): 5785-5807. 2019.Despite its short historical moment in the sun, behaviorism has become something akin to a theoria non grata, a position that dare not be explicitly endorsed. The reasons for this are complex, of course, and they include sociological factors which we cannot consider here, but to put it briefly: many have doubted the ambition to establish law-like relationships between mental states and behavior that dispense with any sort of mentalistic or intentional idiom, judging that explanations of intellig…Read more
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547Jean-Paul Sartre: Key Concepts (Kindle e-book edition) (edited book)Routledge. 2013.Most readers of Sartre focus only on the works written at the peak of his influence as a public intellectual in the 1940s, notably "Being and Nothingness". "Jean-Paul Sartre: Key Concepts" aims to reassess Sartre and to introduce readers to the full breadth of his philosophy. Bringing together leading international scholars, the book examines concepts from across Sartre's career, from his initial views on the "inner life" of conscious experience, to his later conceptions of hope as the binding a…Read more
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428Thinking embodiment with genetics: epigenetics and postgenomic biology in embodied cognition and enactivismSynthese 198 (11): 10685-10708. 2020.The role of the body in cognition is acknowledged across a variety of disciplines, even if the precise nature and scope of that contribution remain contentious. As a result, most philosophers working on embodiment—e.g. those in embodied cognition, enactivism, and ‘4e’ cognition—interact with the life sciences as part of their interdisciplinary agenda. Despite this, a detailed engagement with emerging findings in epigenetics and post-genomic biology has been missing from proponents of this embodi…Read more
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407Deleuze’s Other-StructureSymposium 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 expressi…Read more
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386Throughout much of the twentieth century, the relationship between analytic and continental philosophy has been one of disinterest, caution or hostility. Recent debates in philosophy have highlighted some of the similarities between the two approaches and even envisaged a post-continental and post-analytic philosophy. Opening with a history of key encounters between philosophers of opposing camps since the late nineteenth century - from Frege and Husserl to Derrida and Searle - the book goes on …Read more
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326Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, and the Alterity of the OtherSymposium 6 (1): 63-78. 2002.Suggesting that phenomenology results in an “imperialism of the same” that considers the other only in terms of their effect upon the subject rather than in their genuine alterity, Levinas initiates a line of thought that can still be discerned in the work of Foucault, Derrida and Claude Lefort. However, this paper argues that Merleau-Ponty’s work is capable of avoiding this line of criticism, and that his position is an important alternative to the more dominant Derridean and Levinasian concept…Read more
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318Merleau-Ponty and Liberal NaturalismIn Mario De Caro & David Macarthur (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Liberal Naturalism, Routledge. 2022.As neither a classical naturalist nor a non-naturalist, Merleau-Ponty appears to be a moderate or liberal naturalist. But can a phenomenologist really be a naturalist, even a liberal one? A lot hinges on how we tease this out, both as to whether it is plausible to claim Merleau-Ponty as a liberal naturalist (I argue it is), and as to whether it is an attractive and coherent position. Indeed, despite its important challenges to orthodox naturalism, there are arguably two traps to avoid. If it bec…Read more
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313Phenomenology, Abduction, and Argument: Avoiding an Ostrich EpistemologyPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences (3): 1-18. 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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305Transcendental Priority and Deleuzian Normativity. A Reply to James WilliamsDeleuze and Guatarri Studies 2 (1): 101-108. 2008.I am grateful that someone whose work I greatly admire could be the philosopher to so eloquently and succinctly cut to the heart of the problem that I posed in the previous issue of Deleuze Studies. James Williams' critical reply leaves me, prima facie, confronted by a stark alternative: either I have misunderstood Deleuze, or I have illustrated problems and lacunae in Deleuze. I will suggest, however, that this is a false alternative, and that Williams' and my divergent accounts of The Logic of…Read more
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297Mark Eli Kalderon, "Sympathy in Perception" (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2018 (0809). 2018.Mark Eli Kalderon's book boldly positions itself as a work in speculative metaphysics. Its point of departure is the familiar distinction between presentational and representational philosophies of perception. Kalderon notes that the latter has been more popular of late, as it is more amenable to "an account" explicating causal or counterfactual conditions on perception; but he wishes to rehabilitate the former, at least in part. One widely perceived disadvantage of presentationalism has been th…Read more
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286Existentialism, Phenomenology and Philosophical MethodIn Felicity Joseph, Jack Reynolds & Ashley Woodward (eds.), Continuum Companion to Existentialism, Continuum. 2011.This chapter explores some of the similarities and differences in the philosophical methods of five philosophers often considered existentialists: Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, de Beauvoir and Marcel. The relationship between existentialism and phenomenological methods, as well as transcendental reasoning in general, is examined.
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283Derrida, friendship and the transcendental priority of the ‘untimely’Philosophy and Social Criticism 36 (6): 663-676. 2010.This article examines Derrida’s insistence on the contretemps that breaks open time, paying particular attention to Politics of Friendship and the way in which this book envisages the ‘untimely’ as both interrupting, and making possible, friendship. Although I suggest that Derrida’s temporal deconstruction of the Aristotelian distinction between utility and ‘perfect’ friendships is convincing, I also argue that Derrida’s own account of friendship is itself touched by time, in the peculiar sense …Read more
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258Derrida and Deleuze on Time and the FutureBorderlands 3 (1): 15. 2004.This paper compares the "future politics", and the philosophies of time, of Derrida and Deleuze.
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240Common sense and philosophical methodology: Some metaphilosophical reflections on analytic philosophy and DeleuzePhilosophical Forum 41 (3): 231-258. 2010.On the question of precisely what role common sense (or related datum like folk psychology, trust in pre-theoretic/intuitive judgments, etc.) should have in reigning in the possible excesses of our philosophical methods, the so-called ‘continental’ answer to this question, for the vast majority, would be “as little as possible”, whereas the analytic answer for the vast majority would be “a reasonably central one”. While this difference at the level of both rhetoric and meta-philosophy is sometim…Read more
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236Problems of other minds: Solutions and dissolutions in analytic and continental philosophyPhilosophy Compass 5 (4): 326-335. 2010.While there is a great diversity of treatments of other minds and inter-subjectivity within both analytic and continental philosophy, this article specifies some of the core structural differences between these treatments. Although there is no canonical account of the problem of other minds that can be baldly stated and that is exhaustive of both traditions, the problem(s) of other minds can be loosely defined in family resemblances terms. It seems to have: (1) an epistemological dimension (How …Read more
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217Postanalytic and Metacontinental: Crossing Philosophical Divides (edited book)Continuum. 2010.This important collection of essays details some of the more significant methodological and philosophical differences that have separated the two traditions, as ...
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217Merleau-Ponty and “Dirty Hands”: Political phronesis and virtù between Marxism and MachiavelliCritical Horizons (3): 231-248. 2023.Despite rarely explicitly thematizing the problem of dirty hands, this essay argues that Merleau-Ponty’s political work can nonetheless make some important contributions to the issue, both descriptively and normatively. Although his political writings have been neglected in recent times, his interpretations of Marxism and Machiavelli enabled him to develop an account of political phronesis and virtù that sought to retain the strengths of their respective positions without succumbing to their pro…Read more
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216Transcendental Arguments About Other Minds and IntersubjectivityPhilosophy Compass 6 (5): 300-311. 2011.This article describes some of the main arguments for the existence of other minds, and intersubjectivity more generally, that depend upon a transcendental justification. This means that our focus will be largely on ‘continental’ philosophy, not only because of the abiding interest in this tradition in thematising intersubjectivity, but also because transcendental reasoning is close to ubiquitous in continental philosophy. Neither point holds for analytic philosophy. As such, this essay will int…Read more
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208Introduction: Post-analytic and meta-continental philosophyIn James Williams, Jack Reynolds, James Chase & Edwin Mares (eds.), Postanalytic and Metacontinental: Crossing Philosophical Divides, Continuum. 2010.This chapter sketches some of the difficulties involved in defining analytic and continental philosophy, but begins to elaborate an argument for the centrality of methodology to the 'divide'.
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208Negotiating the Non-negotiable: Rawls, Derrida, and the Intertwining of Political Calculation and 'Ultra-politics'Theory and Event 9 (3): 15. 2006.I examine the relationship that obtains between the work of Derrida and Rawls, not least because of the conviction that Derrida (and post-structuralism more generally) offers certain invaluable things to political thought that analytic political philosophy would do well to take account of, particularly as concerns the relation between time and politics. In Derrida’s case, his emphasis on the radical difference of the future, the ‘to come’, serves as a guardrail against political absolutisms of a…Read more
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204Existentialism and Poststructuralism: Some Unfashionable ObservationsIn Felicity Joseph, Jack Reynolds & Ashley Woodward (eds.), Continuum Companion to Existentialism, Continuum. pp. 260. 2011.This chapter challenges the received doxa that the generation of ‘poststructuralist’ philosophers broke decisively with existentialism and rendered it out of date, a mere historical curiosity. Drawing on recent research in the area, it draws some lines of influence, and even argues for some surprising points of commonality, between existentialism and poststructuralism. At least some of the core philosophical ideas of poststructuralists such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze …Read more
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200Jacques DerridaInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2002.This article attempts to introduce some of the central dimensions of Jacques Derrida's thought, with attention given to both early and late texts in his oeuvre.
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185Wounds and Scars: Deleuze on the Time (and the Ethics) of the EventDeleuze and Guatarri Studies 1 (2): 15. 2007.This essay examines Deleuze's account of time and the wound in The Logic of Sense and, to a lesser extent, in Difference and Repetition. As such, it will also explicate his understanding of the event, as well as the notoriously opaque ethics of counter-actualisation that are bound up with it, before raising certain problems that are associated with the transcendental and ethical priority that he accords to the event and what he calls the time of Aion. I will conclude by proposing a dialectic bet…Read more
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172Wounds and Scars: Deleuze on the Time and Ethics of the EventDeleuze and Guatarri Studies 1 (2): 144-166. 2007.This paper explores the idea that Deleuze’s oeuvre is best understood as a philosophy of the wound, synonymous with a philosophy of the event. Although this wound/scar typology may appear to be a metaphorical conceit, the motif of the wound recurs frequently and perhaps even symptomatically in many of Deleuze’s texts, particularly where he is attempting to delineate some of the most important differences (transcendental, temporal, and ethical) between himself and his phenomenological predecessor…Read more
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171Post-analytic philosophy : Overcoming the divideIn James Williams, Jack Reynolds, James Chase & Edwin Mares (eds.), Postanalytic and Metacontinental: Crossing Philosophical Divides, Continuum. 2010.This essay uses citational analyses to argue that most of the philosophers considered "postanalytic" - Wittgenstein, McDowell, Davidson, and Rorty - are not, in fact, genuine figures of rapprochement, since the particular essays cited, and/or the background literature that is cited, are not shared in common between the standard-bearing analytic and continental journals
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161Throughout much of the 20th Century, the relationship between analytic and continental philosophy has been one of disinterest, caution or hostility. Recent debates in philosophy have highlighted some of the similarities between the two approaches and even envisaged a post-continental and post-analytic philosophy. Opening with a history of key encounters between philosophers of opposing camps since the late 19th Century - from Frege and Husserl to Derrida and Searle - the book goes on to explore …Read more
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158While there have been many essays devoted to comparing the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty with that of Jacques Derrida, there has been no sustained book-length treatment of these two French philosophers. Additionally, many of the essays presuppose an oppositional relationship between them, and between phenomenology and deconstruction more generally. Jack Reynolds systematically explores their relationship by analyzing each philosopher in terms of two important and related issues—embodiment and a…Read more
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157Sadism and Masochism: A Symptomatology of Analytic and Continental PhilosophyParrhesia 1 (1): 15. 2006.There has recently been a plethora of attempts to understand the key differences that separate the analytic and continental traditions of philosophy, often involving either painstaking descriptions of the divergent argumentative techniques and methodologies that concern them, or comparatively examining in detail the work of certain major theorists in both traditions (e.g. Rawls and Derrida, Lewis and Deleuze). While partly drawing on these two approaches, in this particular essay I instead propo…Read more
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153Continental Philosophy and Chickening Out: A Reply to Simon GlendinningInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 17 (2): 255-72. 2009.This paper critically engages with Simon Glendinning’s The Idea of Continental Philosophy. Glendinning purports to show that there can be no coherent philosophical understanding of continental philosophy as comprising any sort of distinct or unified tradition. In this paper, however, I raise some questions about the largely unilateral direction in which his account of the motives for the divide is pursued: analytic philosophy is envisaged as pathologically projecting the internal and unavoidabl…Read more
Geelong, Victoria, Australia
Areas of Specialization
Metaphilosophy |
Continental Philosophy |
Perception |
Philosophy of Science, Miscellaneous |
Perception and Phenomenology |
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20th Century Philosophy |