Nathan Andersen
My publications, presentations and teaching cover a wide range of concerns, mostly on the history of philosophy and environmental philosophy. More recently, I have begun to focus on film and philosophy, and have become interested in the ways film and new media can help revitalize teaching and learning in the humanities. I have written two books on the subject of film's relevance to philosophy: Shadow Philosophy: Plato's Cave and Cinema (2014), and Film, Philosophy, and Reality: Ancient Greece to Godard (2019), both published by Routledge.
In addition to teaching in the philosophy department at Eckerd College, in Saint Petersburg, Florida, I led the development of a Film Studies program on campus. I co-wrote an NEH Grant that enabled us to hire a full time faculty member in Film Studies. I also run an International Cinema series, which shows first run films from around the world (in 35mm prints) every Friday night during the regular academic year. I am also the co-director of the "Visions of Nature/Voices of Nature," Environmental Film Festival.
I graduated with a double major in Physics and Philosophy from Brigham Young University, working primarily with James Faulconer. I completed a Ph.D. at The Pennsylvania State University, under the direction of John Russon. My dissertation, entitled "Example, Experience and Experiment in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit," explored the relation between the particular and the universal in everyday experience, scientific experimentation, and moral life, as these are examined by Hegel.
In addition to teaching in the philosophy department at Eckerd College, in Saint Petersburg, Florida, I led the development of a Film Studies program on campus. I co-wrote an NEH Grant that enabled us to hire a full time faculty member in Film Studies. I also run an International Cinema series, which shows first run films from around the world (in 35mm prints) every Friday night during the regular academic year. I am also the co-director of the "Visions of Nature/Voices of Nature," Environmental Film Festival.
I graduated with a double major in Physics and Philosophy from Brigham Young University, working primarily with James Faulconer. I completed a Ph.D. at The Pennsylvania State University, under the direction of John Russon. My dissertation, entitled "Example, Experience and Experiment in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit," explored the relation between the particular and the universal in everyday experience, scientific experimentation, and moral life, as these are examined by Hegel.
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Included here are the preface and introduction from the uncorrected proofs. Please refer to the published version of the text for any citations.
Attached here are the title page, preface and introduction.
Place, as Aristotle defines it, is to be sharply distinguished from merely geometrical space. Places, unlike geometrical spaces, are not indifferent to that which they contain. Indeed, they seem to have a kind of power. For unless something interferes, things gravitate naturally toward places that suit them. This power that Aristotle attributes to place is obvious not only in the case of elemental bodies, but much more so in the case of animals, whose very existence depends upon their inhabitation of a suitable place. A fish out of water soon ceases to be a fish, and, in general, living substances can only preserve and maintain themselves given the stable existence of several characteristic environmental conditions. That is why it is surprising that standard readings of Aristotle on the concept of place have focused almost exclusively on its explicit treatment in the Physics, and have largely failed to address his usage of the concept of place in other writings.
My aim in this essay was to elucidate the conception of place at work in Aristotle's biological treatises. A consideration of the role played by place in Aristotle’s biological treatises assists in retrieving a richer and more complex conception of place than is indicated by a tradition of commentators who have looked primarily or exclusively to his explicit comments on the subject in the Physics. It reveals that the Aristotelian approach is not merely of antiquarian interest but can be a valuable resource for recent thinkers – in the context of environmental philosophy, phenomenology, feminist theory and the social sciences – who are working on issues centered around the philosophy of place.
In addition to attempting a resolution of a number of the criticisms raised against Hegel’s account of “sense-certainty,” the first chapter develops the implications of Hegel’s claim that sense-certainty fails to appreciate the fact that it relies upon a determinate conception of the nature of examples, which undercuts its claims to immediate knowledge. The second chapter focuses upon experimental knowledge, and shows that the turn to experiment in epistemology can be interpreted as an attempt to rethink the nature of examples as they relate to knowledge. Hegel’s basic criticism of the “experimental conception of knowledge” is contrasted with a number of the criticisms that have been raised by recent investigations of experimental practices. Chapters three and four examine Hegel’s conception of self-knowledge, and show that a number of the problems raised within the previous forms of knowing are resolved within the sphere of self-consciousness and “Spirit.” In particular, the final chapter shows that the kind of self-knowing that takes place in the phenomenon of “conscientious forgiveness” has a universality that is attentive to the particularity of the situation wherein it arises. It is argued that to this form of knowledge there corresponds a conception of example – that of “exemplary selfhood” – that can successfully resolve the problem of the relation between universal and particular in knowledge with which the study begins.
Included here are the preface and introduction from the uncorrected proofs. Please refer to the published version of the text for any citations.
Attached here are the title page, preface and introduction.
Place, as Aristotle defines it, is to be sharply distinguished from merely geometrical space. Places, unlike geometrical spaces, are not indifferent to that which they contain. Indeed, they seem to have a kind of power. For unless something interferes, things gravitate naturally toward places that suit them. This power that Aristotle attributes to place is obvious not only in the case of elemental bodies, but much more so in the case of animals, whose very existence depends upon their inhabitation of a suitable place. A fish out of water soon ceases to be a fish, and, in general, living substances can only preserve and maintain themselves given the stable existence of several characteristic environmental conditions. That is why it is surprising that standard readings of Aristotle on the concept of place have focused almost exclusively on its explicit treatment in the Physics, and have largely failed to address his usage of the concept of place in other writings.
My aim in this essay was to elucidate the conception of place at work in Aristotle's biological treatises. A consideration of the role played by place in Aristotle’s biological treatises assists in retrieving a richer and more complex conception of place than is indicated by a tradition of commentators who have looked primarily or exclusively to his explicit comments on the subject in the Physics. It reveals that the Aristotelian approach is not merely of antiquarian interest but can be a valuable resource for recent thinkers – in the context of environmental philosophy, phenomenology, feminist theory and the social sciences – who are working on issues centered around the philosophy of place.
In addition to attempting a resolution of a number of the criticisms raised against Hegel’s account of “sense-certainty,” the first chapter develops the implications of Hegel’s claim that sense-certainty fails to appreciate the fact that it relies upon a determinate conception of the nature of examples, which undercuts its claims to immediate knowledge. The second chapter focuses upon experimental knowledge, and shows that the turn to experiment in epistemology can be interpreted as an attempt to rethink the nature of examples as they relate to knowledge. Hegel’s basic criticism of the “experimental conception of knowledge” is contrasted with a number of the criticisms that have been raised by recent investigations of experimental practices. Chapters three and four examine Hegel’s conception of self-knowledge, and show that a number of the problems raised within the previous forms of knowing are resolved within the sphere of self-consciousness and “Spirit.” In particular, the final chapter shows that the kind of self-knowing that takes place in the phenomenon of “conscientious forgiveness” has a universality that is attentive to the particularity of the situation wherein it arises. It is argued that to this form of knowledge there corresponds a conception of example – that of “exemplary selfhood” – that can successfully resolve the problem of the relation between universal and particular in knowledge with which the study begins.