Profile

Career

Research

Overview

Research interests

Hegel and neo-Hegelianism (especially Alexandre Kojève), Freud and the history of psychoanalysis, issues in the philosophy of religion

Current projects

• Kulturkritik from the 19th century onwards
• the rationality of religion
• issues of post-secularism

Publications

Selected publications

Books

• Modern German Thought from Kant to Habermas: An Annotated German-Language Reader, co-ed., Rochester, NY: Camden House, in preparation
• Das Ende der Geschichte und der bürgerliche Rechtsstaat. Hegel – Kojève – Fukuyama, Tübingen/Basel: Francke, 2007
• Freud’s Theory and Its Use in Literary and Cultural Studies: An Introduction, Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2003; paperback edition 2004 (translated into German, Polish, Dutch, and Chinese)

Papers

• "Hegel's View of Modern Society", in preparation
• "Unlearning How to Hope: Eleven Theses in Defence of Liberal Democracy and Consumer Culture", in Peter Thompson, ed., The Privatisation of Hope: Ernst Bloch and the Crisis of Modernity, Durham, NC: Duke UP, in press
• "Utopia and the End of History", in Utopia and Social Theory, eds. Michael Hviid and Keith Tester, London: Ashgate, in press
• "Die positivistische Versuchung. Zur Religionskritik in Freuds Zukunft einer Illusion", in Kathy Zarnegin, ed., Die Wissenschaft des Unbewussten, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2010, pp. 33-53
• "Ist der Westen noch zu retten? Zum Diskurs der Kulturkritik und des islamischen Fundamentalismus", in Diskurse als Mittel und Gegenstände der Germanistik, eds. Franciszek Grucza, Grzegorz Pawlowski, and Reinhold Utri, Warsaw: Euro-Edukacja, 2009, pp. 29-44
• "Bonjour Tristesse: Alexandre Kojève's Reading of Françoise Sagan", in: Phrasis: Studies in Language and Literature 50 (1), 2009, pp. 3-20
• "Niklas Luhmann" and (with Hans-Joachim Höhn) "Soziale Systeme", in Heinz Ludwig Arnold, ed., Kindlers Literatur Lexikon, Stuttgart: 3rd, fully rev. edition Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler, 2009, vol. 10: pp. 353 and 354-355
• "We hadden het nog nooit zo goed", in: Trouw (Dutch national newspaper), 2 August 2008, Letter & Geest: pp. 2-3

External activities

Editorial duties

• Co-editor of Modern German Thought from Kant to Habermas: An Annotated German-Language Reader, Camden House, in preparation
• Member of the editorial board of Publications of the English Goethe Society