Faculty

Dennis Schmidt

Liberal Arts Research Professor of Philosophy, Comparative Literature, and German

Schmidt Education:
  • B.A., Bucknell University
  • M.A., Boston College
  • Ph.D., Boston College
Areas of Specialization:
  • Ancient philosophy
  • Post-Kantian Continental Philosophy (esp. Hegel, Schelling, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, Derrida)
  • Aesthetics
  • Literary Criticism
  • German Romaniticism
  • Hermeneutics
Recent Courses:
  • Art and Truth - "From Kant to Klee"
  • The History of Criticism I - Literature and Criticism in Ancient Greece
  • Ancient Philosophy - Plato's "Republic"
  • Heidegger - "Being and Time"
  • Gadamer - "Truth and Method"
  • Poetics and Speculation - 19th and 20th Century
Recent Books:
  • "The Difficulties of Ethical Life," co-edited with Shannon Sullivan (Fordham University Press, 2008)
  • Lyrical and Ethical Subjects: Essays on the Periphery of the Word, Freedom, and History (SUNY Press, 2005)
  • On Germans and Other Greeks: Tragedy and Ethical Life (Indiana University Press, 2001)
  • Hermeneutishce Wege: Hans-Georg Gadamer zum Hundertsten , co-edited with Günter Figal (Mohr Verlag, 2000)
  • Editor, SUNY Press "Series in Continental Philosophy" (over 125 titles)

Recent Articles:

2009: “Nietzsche und die Wiedergeburt der Tragödie,” in Philosophie des Tragischen , ed. L. Huhn, Meiner Verlag.
2009: “Naked, Wild, and Puny: On the Idea of Form and Limits Untold,” in Philosophy Today.
2009: “A Brief Introduction to Hermeneutics,” in Filozofija na maturi, ed. Komel.
2009: “The Late Heidegger,” The History of Continental Philosophy, Vol. 4., ed. Lawlor and Schrift, Acumen Press.
2008: “Who counts? On Democracy, Power, and the Incalculable,” in Research in Phenomenology, pp. 228-243.
2008: “La filosopfia e il pathos della tragedia: Intervista con Professore Dennis Schmidt” http://www.giornaledifilosofia.net/
2008: “What should be said of tragedy today?”, in The Locus of Tragedy , ed. Crombez, Brill, Leiden, pp. 319-334.
2008: “Hermeneutics and Original Ethics,” in The Difficulties of Ethical Life, Fordham University Press, New York, pp. 35-47 + 214-216.
2008: “From the beginning once again,” in Ancient Philosophy Today , ed. Gurtler and Cleaery, BACAP, Boston.
2008: “Heidegger, Gadamer, Klee: On Word and Image,” in Jahrbuch für Hermeneutik , Stuttgart, Band 7, pp. 245-263.
2008: “Über das Tragische: Ein Versuch zu Schelling,” in Schelling und Heidegger, Schellingiana, ed. Huhn, Frommann-Holzboog Verlag, Stuttgart.
  Current Projects:
 
Two books should be completed in the next year or so:

  • "On Gesture: Between Word and Image" - a discussion of the truth character of the image and the history of the philosophical treatment of the image. Figures considered include Homer, Plato, Kant, Heidegger, Klee, Gadamer, Derrida.
  • Socrates with a Cane: Coming to Terms with Gadamer - in addition to lengthy discussions of Gadamer, both his person and his work, there are also discussions of Heidegger, Plato, Socrates, Xenophon, Freud, Mahler.
  • My next project emerges out of a series of articles and talks I have given over the past five or six years.  It is tentatively entitled On the Unbidden: A History of the Idea of Nature

 

Faculty