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Literature & Philosophy
International Workshop, University of St. Gall
October 16‐17, 2015
Venue
University of St. Gall; Dufourstrasse 50;
9000 St. Gall, Room: 01‐112
Contact
[email protected]
+41 71 224 3116
Organization
Michael Festl (St. Gall), Philipp Schweighauser (Basel)
Swiss Association for North American Studies
& Swiss Philosophical Society
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Friday, October 16
12:45p–1:00p Introduction
1:00p–2:00p Winfried Fluck, FU Berlin
The Separation Between ‘Art’ and ‘Life’
2:00p–3:00p Lisa Jones, St. Andrews
Philosophising Narrative
3:15p–4:15p Thomas Claviez, Berne
Dramas of Recognition: Philosophy as Literary History
4:15p–5:15p Dieter Thomä, St. Gall
Performativity and Reference: Some Polemical Remarks on the Current
State of Literary Studies
5:45p–6:45p Miriam Strube, Paderborn
Following the Weaver’s Shuttle: The to and fro of Literature and
Philosophy
6:50p–8:05p Ralph M. Berry, Florida State
Stanley Cavell and the Necessity of Modernism
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Saturday, October 17
9:00a–10:00a Claudia Franziska Brühwiler, St. Gall
Between Philosophy, Literature, and Social Science: Political Theory as
the Disciplinary ‘Other’
10:00a–11:00a Michael Festl, St. Gall
The End of Intersubjectivity?
Science, Literature, and Transformative Experiences
12:00p–1:00p Deborah Madsen, Geneva
Indigenous Tradigital Narrative and Humanistic Knowledge
1:00p–2:00p Michael Hampe, ETH Zurich
Contexts of Presuppositions and Effects of Arguments
2:00p–2:15p Concluding Remarks
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RalphM.Berry:StanleyCavellandtheNecessityofModernism
Abstract: Since the 1960s, modernism has been studied in three distinguishable ways: as a
historical period, as a cultural movement, and as an artistic achievement. Although each
implies the other two, critics will be looking for different things, depending on which is
paramount. Stanley Cavell’s most original contributions have been to our understanding of
modernism as an aesthetic achievement, but he has suggested more controversially that
modernism as both a period and movement derives from necessities revealed only in such
achievements. In his account, modernism in the arts is the solution to a particular problem.
Although the problem pervades and animates Wittgenstein's philosophy, it appears most
conspicuous in theater, where the condition of understanding has been from Shakespeare to
the 21st century one of bringing the audience, not into the presence, but into the present of
those on stage. The condition is met according to Cavell only when what happens in the
drama happens simultaneously, not to, but for those attending. The emphasis falls on
temporality, not on empathy, mimesis, or identification. The achievement of Beckett’s
theater, like the achievement of Wittgenstein’s philosophical writings, reveals that the
specifically modern problem, in both life and the arts, is the difficulty of being in the
condition one is in, as though critical consciousness were an endless over‐writing of the
present by past and future. In Cavell’s philosophy, this repetition compulsion is overcome
only in foregoing knowledge and acknowledging others and the world, and in painting,
sculpture, theater, and literature it is overcome by foregoing representation and
acknowledging what in any painting, sculpture, drama, or poem happens of itself. When
Cavell characterizes modernism, not as the attempt to invent new works, but as the attempt
to invent new media for works, that is, as an attempt to discover new aesthetic
"automatisms," he is not describing an insular aesthetic or a turn to art for art's sake. He is
describing a therapeutic aesthetic, one in which the goal is to constitute subjects for life.
Bio: R. M. Berry is author of the novels Frank (2006), an "unwriting" of Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein, and Leonardo’s Horse, a New York Times “notable book” of 1998, as well as
two collections of short fiction, Dictionary of Modern Anguish (2000), described by the
Buffalo News as "inspired ... by the spirit of Ludwig Wittgenstein," and Plane Geometry and
Other Affairs of the Heart, winner of the 1985 Fiction Collective Prize. He edited the fiction
anthology Forms at War: FC2 1999‐2009 and, with Jeffrey DiLeo, the critical anthology
Fiction’s Present: Situating Contemporary Narrative Innovation (2007). His essays on
experimental fiction, Wittgenstein's philosophy, and Stanley Cavell have appeared in such
journals as New Literary History, Philosophy and Literature, Symploké, Narrative, and
Soundings, and in such volumes as the Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Literature (2009),
Stanley Cavell and Literary Studies (2011), and Ordinary Language Criticism: Literary Thinking
After Cavell After Wittgenstein (2003). He is professor and former chair of English at Florida
State University and the former director of the independent literary publisher FC2. He and
his wife currently divide their time between homes in Atlanta, GA and Tallahassee, FL.
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ClaudiaFranziskaBrühwiler:BetweenPhilosophy,Literature,andSocialScience:PoliticalTheoryastheDisciplinary‘Other’
Abstract: In‐between spaces are fraught with risks and uncertainties as they keep their
occupants in limbo, without a clear destination or sense of belonging. Although modern
academia encourages researchers to move across disciplinary boundaries and leave
established turfs, one may at times risk ‘disciplinary homelessness’ by doing so. In the case
of Political Theory, some argue that a whole sub‐discipline finds itself in such an in‐between
space without definite prospects. Traditionally, theorists are part of political science faculties
and are therefore regularly confronted with the standards, logic, and mores of the social
sciences. Being at the margins of their own departments and professional associations,
theorists often reach out beyond the boundaries of their alleged main discipline, political
science, to join the debates in political philosophy. Shared research interests alone,
however, do not necessarily bridge differences in disciplinary traditions, vocabulary, and
method. As a result, theorists often contend themselves with a doubly marginal role.
I suggest that the study of literature does not only enrich Political Theory as such, but
it also helps establish interdisciplinary bridges. On the one hand, Political Theory has gained
insights from fiction that are relevant for more empirically driven subfields in political
science and can alter the way researchers think about key concepts in, for instance,
international relations or political socialization. On the other hand, venturing into the field of
literature puts both political theorists and philosophers on less charted territory, enabling
them to ignore divisive practices and develop a shared perspective.
Bio: Claudia Franziska Brühwiler holds a doctoral degree in Political Science (Dr. rer. publ.)
from the University of St. Gallen where she teaches courses in political thought, American
politics, and political culture. Her first book, Political Initiation in the Novels of Philip Roth
(Bloomsbury, 2013), focused on how studies in political socialization can benefit from fiction,
taking Philip Roth’s oeuvre as an example. She is co‐editor of the upcoming Political
Companion to Philip Roth (with Lee Trepanier; University Press of Kentucky) and of the
interdisciplinary handbook Transcultural Management in the BRIC States (with Yvette
Sánchez; Gower, 2015). Her articles have been published in Journal of American Studies,
Philip Roth Studies, and in PS: Political Science & Politics. She is currently working on her
post‐doctoral treatise (Habilitationsschrift) on Ayn Rand’s Europe.
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ThomasClaviez:DramasofRecognition:PhilosophyasLiteraryHistory
Abstract: A certain absence cannot help but being noticed when reading contemporary
critical theory in general, and the hotly debated topic of ‘recognition’ in particular: that of
literature. Its loss of significance as a point of reference is indeed striking, compared to that
enjoyed in earlier varieties of critical theory. The talk will not only show that this is the case,
but will offer a tentative answer as to why this is so, in arguing that the paradigms on which
most of the arguments of the recognition debate are couched go back to the agenda of
American realism. A glance at modernism and beyond, however, should make it clear as to
why this realist agenda has been superseded, and that, since then, what literature offers us
are rather ‘dramas of recognition’ that radically put into question some of the
presuppositions of contemporary theories of recognition.
Bio: Thomas Claviez is currently Professor for Literary Theory and Co‐Director of the Center
for Cultural Studies at the University of Berne. He is the author of Grenzfälle: Mythos –
Ideologie – American Studies (Trier: wvt, 1998) and Aesthetics & Ethics: Moral Imagination
from Aristotle to Levinas and from Uncle Tom's Cabin to House Made of Dawn (Heidelberg:
Universitätsverlag Winter 2008), and has co‐edited numerous volumes, among them "Mirror
Writing": (Re‐)Constructions of Native American Identity (Glienicke/Cambridge: Galda +
Wilch Verlag, 2000) (with Maria Moss), Theories of American Studies/Theories of American
Culture, REAL‐Band Nr. 19 (Tübingen: Narr, 2003) (with Winfried Fluck), Neo‐Realism:
Between Innovation and Continuation, special issue of Amerikastudien/American Studies
(Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2004) (with Maria Moss) and Aesthetic
Transgressions: Modernity, Liberalism, and the Function of Literature (Heidelberg:
Universitätsverlag Winter, 2006) (with Ulla Haselstein and Sieglinde Lemke). A collection of
essays he has edited with the title The Common Growl: Toward a Poetics of Precarious
Community is forthcoming with Fordham University Press in 2016, as well as an introduction
to the oeuvre of Jacques Rancière, co‐authored with Dietmar Wetzel. Currently he is working
on a monograph with the title A Metonymic Society? Toward a New Poetics of Contingency.
He has published essays on Pragmatism, Ecology, American Studies, American literature,
Ethics and Aesthetics, the relationship between Europe and America, Democracy theory, and
Native American literature.
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MichaelFestl:TheEndofIntersubjectivity?Science,Literature,andTransformativeExperiences
Abstract: In a highly recognized paper from 2015 L. A. Paul shaped the notion of
transformative experiences. She hereby means experiences so fundamental that one is
incapable of assessing ex ante how one’s life will be affected by them. Whereas Paul uses
this notion to make a (surely laudable) case against Rational‐Choice‐Theory I argue that the
notion has a more profound impact on contemporary philosophy. In particular, it challenges
the concept of intersubjectivity which has become central to a number of ethical theories, e.
g. pragmatism and Critical Theory. By questioning men’s competence for, at least roughly,
anticipating how they will perceive future experiences, Paul’s research a fortiori questions
their competence for understanding how others perceive certain experiences. However, this
competence is a necessary condition of any ethically meaningful account of intersubjectivity.
I defend the concept of intersubjectivity against the challenge thus sketched and
thereby distinguish two approaches for overcoming the challenge: the scientific and the
narrative approach. The scientific approach, as I define it, gathers as many facts about the
experience as possible. The narrative approach relies on stories about the experience
especially as they appear in literature (broadly conceived). I argue that there is
overwhelming evidence that the first approach is likely to fail. Moreover I outline why the
second approach is likely to succeed whereby the supposition that stories about experiences
shape how experiences are perceived will prove essential. Beyond its core argument my
paper has two further implications. The one is the insight that, opposed to most
philosophical accounts, conceptualizations of intersubjectivity need to start from a concept
of narration. The other is that, in line with previous evidence, narration is not an enemy of
the sciences but its ally in the wider quest to determine, as closely as possible, how things
are (which includes how they are felt).
Bio: Michael Festl studied philosophy, sociology and statistics in Munich, St. Gall and
Chicago. His PhD thesis on the intertwining of justice theory and epistemology has recently
been published in German by Konstanz University Press. Its title translates to ‘Justice as
Historic Experimentalism – Theories of Justice after the Pragmatic Turn in Epistemology.’ He
holds master’s degrees in history and in business studies. Since 2013 he has been a
permanent lecturer in philosophy at the University of St. Gall. Currently he is working on his
post‐doctoral treatise (Habilitationsschrift) on the role of philosophy in the downfall of the
Weimar Republic. Michael has been President of the Swiss Philosophical Society from 2013
through 2015. He won a “CanDoc” full‐stipend by the Swiss National Science Fund and has
been a visiting researcher to the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago in
the academic year 2012‐13 as well as to the Center on Poverty Research at the University of
Salzburg in spring 2012.
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WinfriedFluck:TheSeparationBetween‘Art’and‘Life’
Abstract: The value of literature, critics claim, lies in the fact that it can provide an aesthetic
experience. But almost all literary theories that have replaced formalism as part of the
revisionist turn after the 1960s, ranging from Cultural Studies and Structuralist Marxism to
Poststructuralism and the New Historicism, and also including Race and Gender Studies,
have in common a rejection of the concept of the aesthetic. To keep on using the concept as
a key term of analysis, they argue, perpetuates a separation between art and life, or, worse,
between the aesthetic and the political or social, that is considered theoretically untenable
and must lead to ideological obfuscation. What is the status of the concept of the aesthetic,
then, in contemporary literary theory and philosophy? For literary studies, key questions of a
legitimation of the field are at stake, for philosophy a clarification of the question how
literature can do any philosophical work.
Bio: Winfried Fluck is Professor em. of American Culture at the John F. Kennedy Institute for
North American Studies of Freie Universität Berlin. He has taught at the Universität
Konstanz, Universidad Autonoma Barcelona, Princeton University, UC Irvine, the University
of Richmond and Dartmouth College, and was a research fellow at the National Humanities
Center in North Carolina, the Advanced Studies Center of the Rockefeller Foundation in
Bellagio, and the Internationales Kulturwissenschaftliches Zentrum in Vienna. His books
include Ästhetische Theorie und literaturwissenschaftliche Methode; Populäre Kultur;
Theorien amerikanischer Literatur; Inszenierte Wirklichkeit. Der amerikanische Realismus
1865‐1900; Das kulturelle Imaginäre: Eine Funktionsgeschichte des amerikanischen Romans.
He is a founding member and former director of the Graduate School for North American
Studies at Freie Universität Berlin and Co‐Director of the “Futures of American Studies”‐
Institute at Dartmouth College. His most recent book publications are Romance with
America? Essays on Culture, Literature, and American Studies (2009), Towards a Post‐
Exceptionalist American Studies, ed. with Donald Pease (2014), and American Studies Today:
New Research Agendas, ed. with E. Redling, S. Sielke and H.Zapf (2014).
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MichaelHampe:ContextsofPresuppositionsandEffectsofArguments
Abstract: In his novel Elisabeth Costello, J.M. Coetzee lets his heroine give several talks.
Some are quite philosophical, like the one on animals, and have had consequences in
philosophical debates. By embedding these talks in a narrative, Coetzee produces a special
kind of reflection about philosophical argumentation, a reflection that is relevant for the
evaluation of the “quality” of these arguments, but that cannot be produced by philosophy
itself as long as it is considered a purely argumentative discipline. I will discuss the
philosophical relevance of narratives and the possibilities of philosophy itself to produce
narrations.
Bio: Since 2003 Michael Hampe has been professor for Philosophy at the Department of
Humanities, Social and Political Sciences at the ETH Zurich. He was born in Hannover,
Germany in 1961, studied philosophy, psychology, and German studies in Heidelberg and
Cambridge and graduated with an M.A. in 1984. From 1984 to 1989 he studied biology with
neurobiology and genetics as his main areas and has been a scientific assistant at the
philosophy department in Heidelberg. He also was visiting professor for philosophy at Trinity
College Dublin. In 1994 he received the „Gerhard Hess‐Foerderpreis“ of the German
Research Foundation and headed the interdisciplinary research project on the concept of
law in the natural sciences, law studies, and the social sciences. In 1994 and 1995 he was a
fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin. From 1997 to 1999 he was professor for
theoretical philosophy at the University of Kassel. From 1999‐2003 he held the chair of
philosophy II at the University of Bamberg.
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LisaJones:PhilosophisingNarrative
Abstract: Aestheticians working in the analytic tradition have often been sceptical of some
of the claims made by thinkers from non‐analytic traditions about the nature of literary
categories such as ‘fiction’ and ‘narrative.’ For instance, where some continental thinkers
have given narrative a central role and function in human life and human self‐understanding
(e.g. Ricoeur, 1991), more analytically‐minded philosophers of art and literature have been
keen to rein in such claims. Lamarque (2004), for example, has warned against over‐inflating
the importance of narrative and has made the case for confronting what he sees as myths
about narrative, such as the idea that narrative is the ground of personal identity. In this talk,
I present and assess some of the key reasons for such scepticism on the part of analytic
aestheticians, before turning to some more recent work on narrative (Goldie, 2012) which
steers a middle course between the poles of anti‐narrativism and (full blown) narrativist
theory. I will aim to show that Goldie’s account is one that brings out the particular
importance of narrative, particularly for human understanding, without making the kinds of
overblown claims of which narrative theorists are often accused.
Bio: Dr. Lisa Jones is Principal Teaching Fellow in Philosophy at the University of St Andrews
in Scotland, where she has been working since 2004. Prior to that, she completed her PhD at
the University of Liverpool, England. Her specialisms are aesthetics, philosophy of art, and
philosophy and literature, and she also has interests in moral philosophy (normative and
applied ethics). Her work often deals with issues at the intersection of aesthetics and ethics,
and she has usually focused on philosophical issues concerning fiction and narrative. She has
published articles on the cognitive value of fictional literature, and on the nature and
function of narrative and its relevance to human life.
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DeborahMadsen:IndigenousTradigitalNarrativeandHumanisticKnowledge
Abstract: In this presentation, I want to raise some fundamental questions about the
relationship between narrative storytelling and the philosophy of knowledge. An argument
frequently advanced in defence of the beleaguered Humanities is that our literary corpus
produces a distinctive kind of knowledge, which I propose to enter through consideration of
the emergent field of indigenous “tradigital” narrative, exemplified by the highly‐successful
Iñupiat video game, Kisima Ingitchuna (Never Alone), developed by Upper One Games, a for‐
profit division of the Cook Inlet Tribal Council (Alaska Native) and released by E‐Line Media in
2014.
As an instance of indigenous tradigital narrative, Never Alone seeks to preserve and
disseminate Iñupiat language, storytelling, and ways of knowing through interactive game‐
play that is directed by the principles of Indigenous traditional knowledge. The analytical
question thus arises: how, precisely, can an interactive digital narrative create knowledge? I
approach this question using the MDA (mechanics, dynamics, aesthetics) framework,
proposed by Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, and Robert Zubek, to ask:
how do the mechanics of the game (the rules or constraints on actions within which
game‐play takes place) work to impart such epistemological principles as
cooperation, respect for environment, and intergenerational wisdom?
what is the form of the game dynamics, or the ways in which the mechanics act on
the possibilities for player behaviours, that produces knowledge of the game‐world?
what are the ‘aesthetics,’ or emotional responses evoked in the player, when
interacting with the game system and how is this empathy related to the acquisition
of knowledge?
These questions require not only literary but also philosophical answers and raise further
questions that bring us to the potential productivity of an intersectional methodology:
how can the philosophy of empathy advance our understanding of video‐game
aesthetics?
what kinds of knowledge can be said to be generated through the dynamic
interaction of player and game‐world?
what are the epistemological principles that underpin the game mechanics? And how
might ‘indigenous’ knowledge relate to the general category of ‘knowledge’?
These issues engage questions posed in the conference call for papers such as: the truth
status of storytelling, the social and formal functions of storytelling, the distinctiveness of
creative texts, and the meaning of aesthetics.
Bio: Deborah Madsen is Professor of American Studies at the University of Geneva. Most
recently, she is the editor of the Routledge Companion to Native American Literature
(forthcoming October 2015). Her current projects concern 1) repatriation politics in
Indigenous literary works voiced by the dead, and 2) the decolonizing potential of “tradigital”
storytelling, especially Indigenous video games.
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PhilippSchweighauser
Bio: Philipp Schweighauser is Associate Professor and Head of American and General
Literatures at the University of Basel. He is currently serving as the President of the Swiss
Association for North American Studies. Schweighauser is the author of The Noises of
American Literature, 1890‐1985: Toward a History of Literary Acoustics (UP Florida, 2006),
the co‐editor of a special issue on Aesthetics in the 21st Century (Punctum Books, 2014), and
the co‐editor of three essay collections: Teaching Nineteenth‐Century American Poetry (MLA,
2007), Terrorism, Media, and the Ethics of Fiction: Transatlantic Perspectives on Don DeLillo
(Continuum, 2010) and Haunted Narratives: Life Writing in an Age of Trauma (U of Toronto
P, 2013). He is currently preparing for publication Beautiful Deceptions: European Aesthetics,
the Early American Novel, and Illusionist Art, 1750‐1828, which explores deception as a
political, epistemological, and aesthetic topos in eighteenth‐ and early nineteenth‐century
European reflections on art and sensuous cognition as well as contemporaneous American
literature, painting, and sculpture. He is directing the SNSF research project "Of Cultural,
Poetic, and Medial Alterity: The Scholarship, Poetry, Photographs, and Films of Edward Sapir,
Ruth Fulton Benedict, and Margaret Mead" (2014‐2017).
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MiriamStrube:FollowingtheWeaver’sShuttle:ThetoandfroofLiteratureandPhilosophy
Abstract: The relationship between philosophy and literature has always been tricky,
beginning with Plato’s philosophical polemic against the literature of Homer, Aeschylus and
the like, in which Plato used – of all things – literary tricks. As complex as this relationship
can be, some philosophers and writers alike have found it very fruitful. In my paper I want to
turn to three examples that show a productive engagement. In order to emphasize that this
is a dynamic – a to and fro – that connects these two fields like the weaver’s shuttle
connects warp and weft, I explore the philosophical poet Wallace Stevens as well as the
interest in and use of literature by the philosophers Stanley Cavell and Cornel West. I read
these three as kindred spirits who, first of all, see intrinsic value in the other field and,
secondly, creatively appropriate pragmatist philosophy. It is on the basis of such a dynamic
of mutual appreciation and productive appropriation that I build for my own
conceptualization of this intricate interlace.
Bio: Miriam Strube is Professor of American Studies at Paderborn University, Germany. She
has studied American Studies, English and philosophy at Bochum University and New York
University. As part of her Ph.D. studies, she had a scholarship for Columbia University and
was a Fulbright scholar in Washington D.C. She is the author of Subjekte des Begehrens: Zur
sexuellen Selbstbestimmung der Frau in Literatur, Musik und visueller Kultur and co‐editor
(with Susanne Rohr) of Revisiting Pragmatism: William James in the New Millennium as well
as Pragmatism’s Promise (special edition for Amerikastudien / American Studies). She is
currently editing a textbook on American Philosophy and finishing her book project, Making
Sense of the U.S.A.: Pragmatist Philosophy and Modernist Culture, for which she was a
visiting scholar at Harvard University. She has also published articles on Gender Studies,
feminist philosophy, and on popular culture.
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DieterThomä:PerformativityandReference:SomePolemicalRemarksontheCurrentStateofLiteraryStudies
Abstract: Maurice Merleau‐Ponty once stated that the philosopher cannot uphold the
neutral position of the thinking subject: he is drawn into the field of language and exposed
to the “experience of the world.” This leads Merleau‐Ponty to the plausible conclusion that
the line dividing philosophy and literature gets blurred. This makes the philosopher even
more curious how literary studies talk about literature, how it is framed and positioned as a
mode of speech or as an ensemble of genres. This paper gives a rather polemical account of
the current state of literary studies by going back to what may be regarded as the primal
scene of their recent history: the conference “The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of
Man” at Johns Hopkins University in 1966. Two developments are triggered by this
conference: the deconstruction of the “author” and the critique of the referential relation
between language and some kind of reality. These developments further lead to the rise of
constructivism and to the more general claim that all knowledge is “poetological.” After
giving a critical account of the bearings of these theoretical twists and turns, the paper
concludes by discussing and defending the author’s “arrogation of voice” (Stanley Cavell)
and by emphasizing literature’s concern with reality taken as an aggregate of “matters‐of‐
concern” (Bruno Latour).
Bio: Dieter Thomä is professor of philosophy at the University of St. Gall, Switzerland. He
began his career as a journalist with the Sender Freies Berlin after graduating from the Henri
Nannen School of Journalism. He studied in Berlin and Freiburg/Breisgau and taught in
Paderborn, Rostock, New York, Berlin and Essen. After moving to St. Gall in 2000, he was also
a fellow at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles (2002‐2003), at the Max Weber
Center in Erfurt (2007‐2008), and at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2009‐2010), and held
visiting professorships at the University of California at Davis (2012) and at Brown University,
Providence (2013). Among his main publications are Erzähle dich selbst: Lebensgeschichte als
philosophisches Problem (1998/2007), Heidegger Handbuch (ed., 2003/2013), Totalität und
Mitleid (2006), Väter: Eine moderne Heldengeschichte (2008/2011), and Einfall des Lebens:
Theorie als geheime Autobiographie (co‐author, 2015). He is currently completing a
manuscript on the trouble‐maker that will be published under the title Puer robustus:
Philosophie des Störenfrieds in 2016.