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Anthony Rudd
Having studied philosophy at Cambridge, Oxford and St Andrews, and taken my PhD at Bristol University, I taught at the University of Hertfordshire before moving to the United States in 2001. Since then I taught at St. Olaf College, in Minnesota until my retirement this summer (2022). I have published four books, Kierkegaard and the Limits of the Ethical (Oxford, 1993) , Expressing the World: Skepticism, Wittgenstein and Heidegger (Open Court, 2003), Self, Value and Narrative; a Kierkegaardian Approach (Oxford, 2012), and Painting and Presence: Why Paintings Matter (Oxford, 2022) as well as numerous articles; I have also co-edited, with Prof. J. Davenport, two collection of essays; Kierkegaard After MacIntyre (Open Court, 2001) and Love, Reason and Will: Kierkegaard After Frankfurt (Bloomsbury, 2015).
My research interests have fallen into two main clusters. The first is a set of issues in ethics, moral psychology and philosophy of religion, which I have mostly approached through my writings on Kierkegaard. In these I have tried to show that Kierkegaard is a philosopher who has much to contribute to contemporary philosophical debates. The second cluster consists of issues in epistemology (especially skepticism) and the philosophy of mind. I see the problem of our knowledge of the external world and the mind-body problem as the two main forms taken by the single basic problem of how to understand the place of subjectivity in the wider world. This problem remains apparently both unavoidable and intractable. I have drawn heavily on both Wittgenstein and Heidegger in thinking about these issues, though I do not regard myself as either an orthodox Wittgensteinian or an orthodox Heideggerian.
My previous book, Self, Value and Narrative: a Kierkegaardian Approach. draws on Kierkegaard, as well as debates in recent and contemporary analytic philosophy to defend an account of the self it calls the NEST (Narrative, Evaluative, Self-Constitutive, Teleological) theory. For more detail please see the summary of the book posted below.
My most recent book, 'Painting and Presence' is about the value that painting has; why it should matter to us. This project breaks some new ground for me, though I think it relates in important ways to both clusters mentioned above. In this book I draw mainly on Phenomenological work in aesthetics (especially Merleau-Ponty) though I also make reference to the analytical aesthetics literature where relevant. My thesis is that understanding the value of painting requires a (non-naturalistic) metaphysical framework which will allow us to think the notions of presence and making present.
See the Introduction to the book, posted below; also the online review by Steven DeLay at
https://reviews.ophen.org/2023/05/31/anthony-rudd-painting-presence-why-paintings-matter-review/
Address: Dept of Philosophy
St Olaf College
1520 St Olaf Ave
Northfield
MN 55057
USA
My research interests have fallen into two main clusters. The first is a set of issues in ethics, moral psychology and philosophy of religion, which I have mostly approached through my writings on Kierkegaard. In these I have tried to show that Kierkegaard is a philosopher who has much to contribute to contemporary philosophical debates. The second cluster consists of issues in epistemology (especially skepticism) and the philosophy of mind. I see the problem of our knowledge of the external world and the mind-body problem as the two main forms taken by the single basic problem of how to understand the place of subjectivity in the wider world. This problem remains apparently both unavoidable and intractable. I have drawn heavily on both Wittgenstein and Heidegger in thinking about these issues, though I do not regard myself as either an orthodox Wittgensteinian or an orthodox Heideggerian.
My previous book, Self, Value and Narrative: a Kierkegaardian Approach. draws on Kierkegaard, as well as debates in recent and contemporary analytic philosophy to defend an account of the self it calls the NEST (Narrative, Evaluative, Self-Constitutive, Teleological) theory. For more detail please see the summary of the book posted below.
My most recent book, 'Painting and Presence' is about the value that painting has; why it should matter to us. This project breaks some new ground for me, though I think it relates in important ways to both clusters mentioned above. In this book I draw mainly on Phenomenological work in aesthetics (especially Merleau-Ponty) though I also make reference to the analytical aesthetics literature where relevant. My thesis is that understanding the value of painting requires a (non-naturalistic) metaphysical framework which will allow us to think the notions of presence and making present.
See the Introduction to the book, posted below; also the online review by Steven DeLay at
https://reviews.ophen.org/2023/05/31/anthony-rudd-painting-presence-why-paintings-matter-review/
Address: Dept of Philosophy
St Olaf College
1520 St Olaf Ave
Northfield
MN 55057
USA
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https://global.oup.com/academic/product/painting-and-presence-9780192856289?q=Anthony%20Rudd&cc=gb&lang=en (UK)
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/painting-and-presence-9780192856289?q=Anthony%20Rudd&cc=us&lang=en (USA)
See also the online review by Steven DeLay at
https://reviews.ophen.org/2023/05/31/anthony-rudd-painting-presence-why-paintings-matter-review/
The book is also available for pre-order from amazon, though the US amazon site (amazon.com) is charging more than twice the publisher's list price! Amazon.co.uk has the same price as OUP (UK).
This book is an exploration of why painting matters; the value that paintings have. I take as a starting-point Plato’s critique of the arts, which claims that they lead us away from rather than towards what is true and good. Following Iris Murdoch, I try to show how this critique can be met on its own terms; that paintings matter because they can convey significant truths which cannot be presented in any other way – they are not paraphrasable. This is because what paintings give us is a sort of knowledge by acquaintance; they make things present to us. Thus they play a revelatory or disclosive role. In explicating this notion I take a particular kind of religious painting - the Eastern Orthodox Icon – as paradigmatic. The icon isn’t concerned to give an accurate naturalistic depiction, showing us what a saint looked like; it is intended to make the saint present to us, or to bring us into the saint’s presence. My thesis is that all painting aims to do something like this; even when it’s a Cezanne painting of a bowl of fruit, rather than an icon of St Peter. This notion of making present is further explicated through dialogue with the work of Merleau-Ponty. I emphasize, though, that painting never makes things present to us absolutely, but only as they resonate with, and thus find expression through, the particular sensibility of the artist. However, if it is to explain the value of painting, the theory must explain why the particular kind of knowledge that painting provides is good to have. I argue that it can only do this if what painting discloses – the essences of things, the order of nature – is itself good. So an adequate account of the value of painting – and of the aesthetic appreciation of nature - requires us to repudiate the Modern picture of a “disenchanted” value-free world.
By bringing these two key thinkers into conversation with each other, we may glean a new understanding of the structure of love, reasons for love or deriving from loving, and more broadly, the central ethical questions of "how to live" and to develop an authentic identity and meaningful life.
Love, Reason, and Will will appeal to readers interested in the philosophy of action and emotions, continental thought (especially in the existential tradition), the study of character in psychology, and theological work on neighbor-love and virtue.
The essays are concerned to argue (contra MacIntyre) that Kierkegaard is not an irrationalist, but also to emphasise the
important commonalities - as well as the remaining differences - between his positive project and MacIntyre's radical critique of contemporary philosophy and society. The volume includes an essay by MacIntyre responding to his critics.
Lippitt. I will look at MacIntyre’s charge that the “criterionless choice” problem still holds; I will then consider problems that MacIntyre and Lippitt have raised about the nature of the teleology that John Davenport and I have ascribed to Judge William; and will conclude by looking at some of the problems Lippitt has raised with the crucial concept of narrative unity.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/painting-and-presence-9780192856289?q=Anthony%20Rudd&cc=gb&lang=en (UK)
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/painting-and-presence-9780192856289?q=Anthony%20Rudd&cc=us&lang=en (USA)
See also the online review by Steven DeLay at
https://reviews.ophen.org/2023/05/31/anthony-rudd-painting-presence-why-paintings-matter-review/
The book is also available for pre-order from amazon, though the US amazon site (amazon.com) is charging more than twice the publisher's list price! Amazon.co.uk has the same price as OUP (UK).
This book is an exploration of why painting matters; the value that paintings have. I take as a starting-point Plato’s critique of the arts, which claims that they lead us away from rather than towards what is true and good. Following Iris Murdoch, I try to show how this critique can be met on its own terms; that paintings matter because they can convey significant truths which cannot be presented in any other way – they are not paraphrasable. This is because what paintings give us is a sort of knowledge by acquaintance; they make things present to us. Thus they play a revelatory or disclosive role. In explicating this notion I take a particular kind of religious painting - the Eastern Orthodox Icon – as paradigmatic. The icon isn’t concerned to give an accurate naturalistic depiction, showing us what a saint looked like; it is intended to make the saint present to us, or to bring us into the saint’s presence. My thesis is that all painting aims to do something like this; even when it’s a Cezanne painting of a bowl of fruit, rather than an icon of St Peter. This notion of making present is further explicated through dialogue with the work of Merleau-Ponty. I emphasize, though, that painting never makes things present to us absolutely, but only as they resonate with, and thus find expression through, the particular sensibility of the artist. However, if it is to explain the value of painting, the theory must explain why the particular kind of knowledge that painting provides is good to have. I argue that it can only do this if what painting discloses – the essences of things, the order of nature – is itself good. So an adequate account of the value of painting – and of the aesthetic appreciation of nature - requires us to repudiate the Modern picture of a “disenchanted” value-free world.
By bringing these two key thinkers into conversation with each other, we may glean a new understanding of the structure of love, reasons for love or deriving from loving, and more broadly, the central ethical questions of "how to live" and to develop an authentic identity and meaningful life.
Love, Reason, and Will will appeal to readers interested in the philosophy of action and emotions, continental thought (especially in the existential tradition), the study of character in psychology, and theological work on neighbor-love and virtue.
The essays are concerned to argue (contra MacIntyre) that Kierkegaard is not an irrationalist, but also to emphasise the
important commonalities - as well as the remaining differences - between his positive project and MacIntyre's radical critique of contemporary philosophy and society. The volume includes an essay by MacIntyre responding to his critics.
Lippitt. I will look at MacIntyre’s charge that the “criterionless choice” problem still holds; I will then consider problems that MacIntyre and Lippitt have raised about the nature of the teleology that John Davenport and I have ascribed to Judge William; and will conclude by looking at some of the problems Lippitt has raised with the crucial concept of narrative unity.
There are significant connections between these two positions, and, of course, they both raise very large issues, which ramify much further than I can deal with fully here. Moreover, Hutto’s paper is itself a broad sketch of a programme for making progress in exploring a large and complex territory, and I must admit that I’m not sure that I understand all of his argumentative strategy. So I will not be trying to present any simple knock-down argument against Hutto’s approach. What I do want to do is to get a clearer grip on what is at issue here. I will do this by considering what seems to me a tension running through his paper between what he wants to achieve, and the means by which he wants to achieve it. I shall go on, for the sake of comparison and contrast, to sketch out an alternative approach to realizing some of Hutto’s objectives, which is however, both less dualistic than what he proposes, and frankly anti-naturalistic. This will inevitably be very sketchy; my hope is that this account will at least serve as a triangulation point which will assist with the surveying of the conceptual landscape, and of the route that Hutto is attempting to take though it.