Faculty

Robert Bernasconi

Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy

Robert Bernasconi
 Education:
  • B.A., Philosophy, School of English and American Studies, Sussex University, 1972. First Class honors.
  • D. Phil., Sussex University, 1982
Areas of Specialization:
  • Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Continental Philosophy
  • Critical Philosophy of Race
  • Social and Political Philosophy
  • Modern Philosophy
  • History of Ethics
Recent Courses:
  • Medieval Ethics
  • Hegel's Philosophy of Religion
  • Sartre and Fanon
  • Levinas
  • Modern Political Philosophy and Slavery
Recent Publications:
  • "The Great White Mirage and the great Black Error: Frantz Fanon's Critical Philosophy of Race" in Living Fanon,, ed. Nigel Gibson. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp. 85-92.
  • "Kant's Third Thoughts on Race" in Reading Kant's Geography,  eds. Stuart Elden and Eduardo Mendieta, Albany: SUNY Press, 2011, pp. 291-318.
  • "Perpetual Peace and the Invention of Total War" in Philosophy and the Return of Violence, eds. Christopher S. Yates and Nathan Eckstrand, New York: Continuum: 2011, pp. 44-60.
  • "The Ruling Categories of the World: The Trinity in Hegel's Philosophy of History" in Blackwell Companion to Hegel,  ed. Stephen Houlgate and Michael Bauer, Oxford: Blackwell,. 2011, pp. 315-331.
  • "Race and Earth In Heidegger's Thinking During the Late 1930s" Southern Journal of Philosophy, 48, 1, 2010, pp. 49-66.
  • "The Philosophy of Race in the Nineteenth Century" in Routledge Companion to Nineteenth Century Philosophy,  ed. Dean Moyar, London: Routledge, 2010, pp. 498-521.
  • "Must We Avoid Speaking of Religion: The Truths of Religions"  Research in Phenomenology,  39, 2, 2009, pp. 204-223.
  • “An Haitian in Paris: Antenor Firmin as a Philosopher Against Racism,” Patterns of Prejudice, vol. 42, no. 4/5, Sept.-Dec. 2008, pp. 365-384.
  • “Can Race be Thought in Terms of Facticity? A Reconsideration of Sartre’s and Fanon’s Existential Theories of Race” in Rethinking Facticity, eds. François Raffoul and Eric Nelson, Albany: SUNY Press, 2008, pp. 195-213.
  • How to Read Sartre,; New York, Norton, 2007.
  • “Black Skin, White Skulls: The Nineteenth Century Debate over the Racial Identity of the Ancient Egyptians,” Parallax, 43, April 2007, pp. 6-20
  Current Projects:

  • "I try to write an essay in each of my areas of specialization every year so as to maintain my expertise. My long term project is to write a philosophical history of the concept of race. In the midterm I intend to write a short monograph on the failure of most seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophers to engage with the evils of the slave trade."

 

Faculty