Research projects of Faculty
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Aronovitch, Hilliard
“Political Culture and the Foundations of Liberal Democracy”
My current research seeks to understand how political orientations and social values evolve, can be rationally assessed, shape government and law, and in turn are shaped by them. The specific hypothesis is that answering these questions illuminates the aims, foundations, and justifications of liberal-democracy. -
Collobert, Catherine *
“La subjugation philosophique de la poésie: stratégies et mise en œuvre platoniciennes”
Ma recherche actuelle porte sur la réception philosophique de la littérature chez Platon et sur la philosophie de la littérature. Le discours philosophique platonicien, reconnu pour exploiter les multiples ressources du langage poétique, est à la fois le résultat et l’expression d’une critique littéraire. Cette dernière peut se lire d’une part, dans le discours platonicien qui prend pour objet spécifique la littérature, et d’autre part, dans la forme même du discours platonicien, qui est une mise en fiction et une théâtralisation de la pensée philosophique. Il s’agit ainsi de montrer qu’une réception philosophique de la littérature, qui comprend d’une part, une réflexion sur la pratique et l’objet littéraires, et d’autre part, un usage spécifique de la littérature et de ses formes, consiste en une stratégie d’appropriation qui vise la subjugation de la littérature. Les frontières du littéraire et du philosophique s’effacent : la littérature devient territoire philosophique. Une telle entreprise a ceci de spécifique qu’elle se propose de supprimer la différence entre philosophie et poésie : l’intention et l’objet philosophiques d’une part, et poétiques d’autre part, sont confondus et leurs différences essentielles dépassées.
Je prépare actuellement un ouvrage intitulé “Territoire littéraire et territoire philosophique : l’annexion platonicienne”.
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Côté, Antoine *
My current research deals with the philosophical theology of Eudes Rigaud who held the Chair of Theology at the University of Paris from 1245 to 1248. My hope is to bring out the importance and originality of Odo's thought within the context of the first half of the thirteenth century.
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Forster, Paul
“Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism”
Peirce views nominalism as a systematic theory of knowledge, values and metaphysics, typical of empiricism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the book I am working on, I explain Peirce's systematic response to nominalism and argue at each stage that his views are driven by his innovations in logic and mathematics. -
Hunter, Graeme
My current scholarly concerns are connected with the modern philosophers Spinoza and Leibniz and the ancient philosophers Cicero and Socrates. I am exploring the possibility of a monograph on Socrates. Some of my non-academic -
Aronovitch, Hilliard
“Political Culture and the Foundations of Liberal Democracy”
My current research seeks to understand how political orientations and social values evolve, can be rationally assessed, shape government and law, and in turn are shaped by them. The specific hypothesis is that answering these questions illuminates the aims, foundations, and justifications of liberal-democracy. -
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writing has recently been collected in In the Agora: The Public Face of Canadian Philosophy, edited by Andrew Irvine and John S. Russell, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.
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Kofman, Daniel
“Theorising Sovereignty and Self-Determination”
I am currently completing a book on state sovereignty and rights of self-determination. This is embedded in a larger project to rethink them foundations of rights in the Western political tradition. I have also been working on methodological questions in normative philosophy, especially intuitionism versus constructivism. -
Leroux, Jean
I am currently writing a two-volume monograph in history of philosophy of science: Philosophie des sciences. Introduction historique à l’épistémologie comparée. Vol. II. Structure et fonction des théories scientifiques (in progress), Philosophie des sciences. Introduction historique à l’épistémologie comparée. Vol. I. Aux sources du Cercle de Vienne (under evaluation at L’Harmattan). -
Moggach, Douglas
“Political Theory and Aesthetics, 1750-1900”
This project seeks to clarify the sources and political consequences of aesthetic though in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, tracing the emergence of important new ideas of the self in relation to nature, society, and the constructed environment. The focus is on romanticism and German idealism, stressing their contemporary relevance. - Philie, Patrice
I am currently working on the nature of rationality. The overall research strategy at this stage consists in investigating the views about rationality inherent in the key thinkers—such as Frege, Wittgenstein, Quine and Davidson—and in elaborating a link between them. This requires a careful reading of selected texts from these philosophers and extracting a conception of ratonality from it, and then defending my interpretation against conflicting ones.
- Raynor, David
“ The Correspondence of David Hume ”
"My major research project for the next few years is preparing a new edition of the complete correspondence of the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776), to be published by Oxford University Press in four volumes. This project has been supported by the SSHRCC and other sources. "
- Reid, Jeffrey
“Hegel and the Ethical Dimension of Objective Discourse”
I am investigating different forms of discourse as they arise in the Phenomenology of Spirit, where they accompany each figure of consciousness. Since each figure presents a certain way of being in the world and being with others, these forms of discourses have ethical import, in the Hegelian sense of recognizing the selfhood of others. How does the language we use engender the ethical space we live in?
- Rietti, Sophie
I am currently working on ethical issues relating to emotion-work and emotion-transfer, two areas on which there is a fairly extensive empirical literature within social sciences and psychology, but on which there has been relatively little work in philosophy, despite the renewed interest in philosophy of emotion generally and ethical issues relating to emotions specifically. This research also ties in more broadly with my interests in issues relating to psychological realism in moral philosophy.
- Rusnock, Paul *
The main focus of my current research is the Prague philosopher Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848). One of the greatest philosophers of the nineteenth century, Bolzano made outstanding contributions to logic, the philosophy of mathematics, metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy, the philosophy of religion, and aesthetics. He was also a public intellectual who played an important role in the history of his homeland, Bohemia (today part of the Czech Republic). I am now working with two senior Bolzano scholars (Rolf George of the University of Waterloo and Jan Sebestik of the CNRS, France) on a variety of projects to make Bolzano's contributions better known and more accessible to English- and French-speaking philosophers. These include interpretive studies, a general introduction to Bolzano's life and work, and translation (including a complete English translation of Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre).
- Sikka, Sonia *
“Cultural Identity from Herder to Heidegger”
I am currently working on a project that examines the idea of cultural identity in the writings of German philosophers, focusing particularly on the thought of Johann Gottfried Herder. Themes covered in my study include: language, race, religion, reason, relativism and pluralism.
- Sneddon, Andrew
Current major research project: a book, provisionally entitled Wide Moral Agency: Externalism, Amoralism, & Moral Psychology. This project is an explicitly externalist account of the psychological capacities for attributing moral responsibility, action-production, moral reasoning and moral judgment. It draws on both the philosophical debate about internalism and externalism in psychology and contemporary empirical studies in moral psychology. It also pays special attention to amoralism, that is, to various kinds of insensitivity to moral considerations.
* This research is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).