Susan Hahn

I work in history of philosophy (late 18th-19th century) and value theory. Especially on moral-political problems at the intersection where history of philosophy meets issues about freedom and agency. I try to make philosophical theory relevant to real-world practices by doing history from the ground up. That is, starting from the view below - real practices, not theory for its own sake - in order to inject historical ideas into moral-political-cultural debates. One current project uses this "No theory first" strategy: "Moral Perspectivism: The Spectre of Relativism in Abolitionist Debates."

Another side of my research pursues the use (and abuse) of organic-evolutionary analogies in perceptual-aesthetic contexts. I'm currently working on a monograph on color perception: "Empirical-Idealism in the Red-Green Problem: Organic Unity in Goethe's Theory of Colors." I apply the organic-evolutionary model in a piece called, "Kant's Cultural Organicism: Between Authority and Autonomy." In some ways, this current work springs from my earlier work on Hegel's organicism.

I've taught philosophy at colleges and universities across North America, Canada, and abroad. Much of my career was spent at Johns Hopkins, the Humanities Center, a graduate research institute, where I was joint with Philosophy. While there, I held visiting teaching appointments at Harvard (Philosophy) and American University of Paris (European Philosophy). I left the country for five years to teach in a bilingual environment in Montréal, Québec. I returned, first as a visiting scholar at MIT, then as a lecturer at MIT in political philosophy (Political Science/Philosophy). I'm based in Cambridge, MA, and have spent the last 6 years lecturing on political philosophy at local schools (MIT, Bentley).

I'm a philosopher, but I seek to cross over the bridge between theory and praxis. The view from up here is better! At MIT, I launched a "Dissident Speaker Series" - a human rights series inspired by Chomsky. The aim being to give dissident intellectuals at risk a safe forum to speak truth to power (and to the powerless). As part of the series, I'm taping live interviews with political and artistic dissidents (under "Videos"/"Transcripts"). I'll be posting my own public writings here as well: "On the Responsibility of Intellectuals: Chomsky or Adorno?" and "Two Colors of Water: Blue-Green or Blue-Gold?"

My current book is called, THE SKEPTICAL ART OF LIVING. Can skeptics live their skepticism? That is, can skeptics act on strong beliefs and values without coming into conflict with their skeptical commitments? I look at a tension between theory and practice in a range of skeptical, and skeptically-influenced, philosophers: Hume, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and Strawson. Specifically, how skeptical doubts have motivated a natural grounding of their values. Some, like Strawson, argue skeptics have to set aside their skeptical doubts in order to act on ordinary practical attachments. Naturalism thus displaces skepticism. I arrive at a distinctively different view. One that avoids his two-standpoint (perspectival) approach that leads to an undesirable relativism. Naturalized values in these authors, I argue, ought not be regarded as an antidote to neutralize their skepticism, but rather, as being linked coherently within their skeptical framework. By linking their skepticism and naturalism, I explore what such a link can do to illuminate both topics

My current book is in some ways a practical extension of the organicism in my first book: CONTRADICTION IN MOTION: Hegel’s Organic Concept of Life and Value (Cornell 2007). I examined a longstanding, intractable problem in Hegel studies: Hegel’s doctrine of contradiction and its application to contexts of value. My aim was to make Hegel’s doctrine of contradiction, once dismissed as heretical, into a plausible one deserving serious consideration. I bypass standard misinterpretations and develop an original line of thinking about contradiction: One that plausibly motivates Hegel’s claims, by linking his views on contradiction to his neglected Philosophy of Nature, in the service of constructing an organically-holistic view of nature and cognition.

We never forget our first love! My life's work on Hegel continues. I'm currently tracing the origins of Hegel's dialectical law back to contradictory structures in optical laws and exclusionary colors in Goethe's color theory. I'm tracking another source from Hegel's early theological writings: "Death and Transfiguration: Origins of Hegel's Dialectic in Paul and the Early Church."

Susan Hahn Cambridge, Massachusetts

[email protected]

[Feb. 19, 2024]