John Russon
Presidential Distinguished Professor
MCKN Rm. 336
jrusson@uoguelph.ca
519-824-4120 x53553

Degrees

B.A., (Philosophy), University of Regina
M.A., (Philosophy), University of Toronto
Ph.D., (Philosophy), University of Toronto
Post-Doctoral Fellow, (Classics), Harvard University

Areas of Teaching and Research

Phenomenology, Hegel, Ancient Philosophy

I am interested in philosophy as a human practice, and in understanding what philosophy is through studying what it has become through its history. My research and teaching range broadly over the entire history of philosophy. My teaching often puts special emphasis on Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Fichte, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida.

My current research revolves around the theme of the human development, and the formation of personality. My recent book HUMAN EXPERIENCE (which won the 2005 Broadview Press/Canadian Philosophical Association Book Prize) focuses on the role of the family in the formation of personality, especially with respect to how the feedback we get from family members about ourselves shapes our sense of who we are. I especially look at the way this interpersonally developed sense of self-worth is embedded into our most basic bodily practices (eating, sleeping, sex, etc.), and how neurotic problems in these areas are to be understood. I wrote this book with the hope that it would be useful as an introduction to Continental Philosophy for introductory classes, and many people have reported that it has been quite successful at this. I am currently working on a follow-up work to this, entitled BEARING WITNESS TO EPHIPHANY, which will especially consider the role of property and of self-expression in the formation of personal identity.

I have organized a number of conferences over the past few years, at Guelph and (formerly) at Penn State University, on Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel and Merleau-Ponty. I also run a annual private seminar--the Toronto Summer Seminar--in which an invited group of faculty and graduate students from schools across North America meet to discuss selected texts from the history of philosophy.

I also play jazz guitar in Toronto with my quartet (The John Russon Quartet) and with the Patricia Fagan Band.

Selected Publications

Books

Author:

• Reading Hegel's Phenomenology (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004).
• Human Experience: Philosophy, Neurosis and the Elements of Everyday Life, (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2003).
• The Self and its Body in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1997).

Editor:

• Reexamining Socrates in the Apology, co-edited with Patricia Fagan, (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, forthcoming).
• Retracing the Platonic Text, co-edited with John Sallis, (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2000).
• Hegel and the Tradition: Essays in Honour of H.S. Harris, co-edited with Michael Baur, (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1997).
  

Chapters in Books

• "Who Are Socrates' Accusers?" in Fagan and Russon (eds), Reexamining Socrates in the Apology, (NWUP, forthcoming)
• "Socrates: A Life Cross-Examined," (co-authored with Patricia Fagan), in Fagan and Russon (eds), Reexamining Socrates in the Apology.
• "Foucault and Aristotle on Human Nature," in Hugh Silverman (ed), Foucault's Genealogies, (New York: Routledge: forthcoming 2007).
• "The Bodily Unconscious in Freud's ‘Three Essays,'" in Jon Mills (ed), Rereading Freud: Psychoanalysis Through Philosophy, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004), pp
• "Hermeneutical Pressure and the Space of Dialectic: What Hegel Means by Spirit," in Charles Scott and John Sallis (eds), Interrogating theTradition: Hermeneutics and the History of Philosophy, (SUNY Press, 2000), pp 235-253.
• "We Sense That They Strive: How to Read (The Theory of the Forms)," in John Russon and John Sallis (eds), Retracing the Platonic Text (Northwestern University Press, 2000), pp 70-84.
• "Just Reading: The Nature of the Platonic Text," Introduction to John Russon and John Sallis (eds), Retracing the Platonic Text, (Northwestern University Press, 2000), pp ix-xix.
• "Deciding to Read: Derrida and Hegel on the Horizon (of Christianity)," in Derrida's Glorious Glas, Joyful Wisdom 5, ed. D. Goicoechea and M. Zlomislic, (Thought House Press, 1997), pp. 37-51.
• "Hegel's 'Freedom of Self-Consciousness' and Early Modern Epistemology," in Russon and Baur (eds), Hegel and the Tradition (University of Toronto Press, 1997), pp 286-309.
• "Hegel and Tradition," Introduction to John Russon and Michael Baur (eds), Hegel and the Tradition, (University of Toronto Press, 1997), pp 3-13.
• "For Now We See Through a Glass Darkly: The Systematics of Hegel's Visual Imagery," in David Michael Levin (ed), Sites of Vision: The Discursive Construction of Sight in the History of Philosophy, (MIT Press, 1997), pp 197-241.
• "Of the Child's New Speech (Bataillian Drama, Nietzschean Cliché)," in D. Goicoechea and M. Zlomislic (eds), Zarathustra's Joyful Annunciations, Joyful Wisdom 4, (Thought House, 1996), pp 72-84.

Articles

• "Temporality and Future of Philosphy in Hegel," International Philosophical Quarterly, (forthcoming).
• "The Spatiality of Self-Consciousness: Originary Passivity in Kant, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida," Chiasmi International, 9 (forthcoming).
• "Reading: Derrida in Hegel's Understanding," Research in Phenomenology, 36 (2006): 181-200
• "Merleau-Ponty and the New Science of the Soul," Chiasmi International, 8 (2006): 129-138.
• "The Intersubjective Path From Body to Mind," Dialogue, 45 (2006): 307-314.
• "The Virtue of Stoicism: On First Principles in Philosophy and Life," Dialogue, 45 (2006): 347-354.
• "The Elements of Everyday Life: Three Lessons from Ancient Greece," Philosophy in the Contemporary World, 13,2 (2006): 84-90 .
• "Eros and Education: Plato's Transformative Epistemology," Laval Théologique et Philosophique, 56 (2000):113-125.
• "The Metaphysics of Consciousness and the Hermeneutics of Social Life: Hegel's Phenomenological System," Southern Journal of Philosophy 36 (1998):81-101.
• "Self-Consciousness and the Tradition in Aristotle's Psychology," Laval Théologique et Philosophique, 52 (1996):777-803.
• "Aristotle's Animative Epistemology," Idealistic Studies, 25 (1995):241-253.
• "Heidegger, Hegel and Ethnicity: The Ritual Basis of Self-Identity," Southern Journal of Philosophy 33 (1995):509-532.
• "Hermeneutics and Plato's Ion," Clio 24 (1995):399-418.
• "Embodiment and Responsibility: Merleau-Ponty and the Ontology of Nature," Man and World, 27 (1994):291-308.
• "Reading and the Body in Hegel," Clio 22 (1993):321-336.
• "Hegel's Phenomenology of Reason and Dualism," Southern Journal of Philosophy 31 (1993):71-96.
• "Selfhood, Conscience, and Dialectic in Hegel's henomenology of Spirit," Southern Journal of Philosophy 29 (1991):533-550
• "The AGON of Self-Consciousness: Ajax, Odysseus and Heroic KLEOS," Ceres 1 (1989):1-13.

Editorial Work

• Guest Editor of Chiasmi International Vol. 8 (2006), entitled "Merleau-Ponty: Science and Philosophy."

Entries in Reference Works

• "Plotinus," in Michael Kelly (ed), Encyclopaedia of Aesthetics (Oxford University Press, 1998) Vol 4, pp 6-7.

Reviews

• Feldman, Karen, Binding Words: Conscience in Hobbes, Hegel and Heidegger, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Feb. 16, 2007.
• McCumber, John, Reshaping Reason, Continental Philosophy Review, 40 (2007): 99-105.
• Bates, Jennifer, Hegel's Theory of Imagination, Review of Metaphysics, 50 (2006): 404-406.
• Levin, David Michael, The Philosopher's Gaze, Research in Phenomenology, 31 (2001).
• Rockmore, Tom: Cognition: An Introduction to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 38 (2000):123-133
• Rinaldi, Giacomo, A History and Interpretation of the Logic of Hegel, Owl of Minerva 29 (1998):207-215.
• Haar, Michel, Heidegger and the Essence of Man, Review of Metaphysics, 48 (1994):405-406.
• Rankin, Kenneth, The Recovery of the Soul: An Aristotelian Essay on Self-Fulfilment, Phoenix, 48 (1994):269-271.
• Houlgate, Stephen, Freedom, Truth and History, Hegel-Studien 27 (1992):192-195.

Critical Responses

• "Interpreting Ancient Greek Culture: Two Classicists Reply," in Clark Butler, History as the Story of Freedom, (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Editions Rodopi, 1997), pp 109-111; (co-authored with Patricia Fagan).