Benjamin Dillon Crowe
CURRICULUM VITAE
Department of Philosophy
Boston University
745 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 516
Boston, Massachusetts 02215
Education
Ph.D. Tulane University, Philosophy, 2004
M.A. Tulane University, Philosophy, 2000
B.A.Hendrix College, Philosophy, 1998
Academic Experience
Fall 2016-present Lecturer, Department of Philosophy, Boston University
Spring 2016Instructor, Department of Philosophy, Boston University
Fall 2015Visiting Scholar, Department of Philosophy, Boston University
2013-2014Visiting Research Scholar, Department of Philosophy, Temple University
2006-2017Assistant Professor (Lecturer), Department of Philosophy, University of Utah
2004-2006 Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Utah.
2003-2004 Graduate Fellow, Center for Ethics and Public Affairs, Murphy Institute of Political Economy, Tulane University.
1998-2003Teaching Assistant and Instructor, Department of Philosophy, Tulane University.
Areas of Specialization, Areas of Competence, and Languages
Modern German Philosophy (especially Heidegger, Fichte, Early Romanticism, and Dilthey), Philosophy of Religion
Early Modern Philosophy, Moral and Political Philosophy
German, Greek (Koine)
Publications
Books
Heidegger’s Phenomenology of Religion: Realism and Cultural Criticism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007).
Heidegger’s Religious Origins: Destruction and Authenticity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006).
Edited Books
The Nineteenth-Century Philosophy Reader (London: Routledge, 2015)
An anthology of primary texts by Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, the major British Idealists, Schopenhauer, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and James, supplemented by specially commissioned essays by scholars in the field.
Translations
J.G. Fichte, Lectures on the Theory of Ethics (1812) (Albany: SUNY Press, 2016).
Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning the Thing (with James Reid) (Rowman & Littlefield, initial contract approved).
Journal Articles
“Fichte on Faith and Autonomy,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 21 (4) (2013): 733-753.
“Herder’s Moral Philosophy: Perfectionism, Sentimentalism, Theism,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy20 (6) (2012): 1141-1161.
“Hutcheson on Natural Religion,”British Journal for the History of Philosophy19 (4) (2011): 711-740.
“Fichte, Eberhard, and the Psychology of Religion,” Harvard Theological Review104 (2011): 93-110.
“Faith and Value: Heinrich Rickert’s Theory of Religion,” Journal of the History of Ideas71 (4) (2010): 613-636.
“Fichte’s Transcendental Theology,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie92 (1) (2010): 68-88.
“Religion and the ‘Sensitive Branch’ of Human Nature,” Religious Studies46 (2010): 251-263.
“Friedrich Schlegel and the Character of Romantic Ethics,” Journal of Ethics 14 (1) (2010): 53-79.
“’Theismus des Gefühls’: Fichte, Heydenreich, and Transcendental Philosophy of Religion,” Journal of the History of Ideas 70 (4) (2009): 569-592.
“Fact and Fiction in Fichte’s Theory of Religion,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 47 (4) (2009): 595-617.
“Beyond Theological Rationalism: The Contemporary Relevance of Herder’s Psychology of Religion,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 21 (3) (2009): 249-273.
“F.H. Jacobi on Faith, Or What It Takes To Be an Irrationalist,” Religious Studies 45 (3) (2009): 309-324.
“Romanticism and the Ethics of Style,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 91 (2009): 21-41.
“Fichte on the Highest Good: Agent Unity and Practical Deliberation in the Jena Sittenlehre,”
Philosophy Today 52 (3) (2008): 379-390.
“Fichte’s Fictions Revisited,” Inquiry 51 (3) (2008): 268-287.
“Revisionism and Religion in Fichte’s Jena Wissenschaftslehre,” British Journal of the History of Philosophy 16 (2) (2008): 371-392.
“On ‘The Religion of the Visible Universe’: Novalis and the Pantheism Controversy,” British Journal of the History of Philosophy 16 (2008): 125-146.
“Heidegger’s Gods,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 15 (2) (2007): 225-246.
“Reasons for Worship: A Response to Bayne and Nagasawa,” Religious Studies 43 (2007): 465-474.
“On the Track of the Fugitive Gods: Heidegger, Luther, Hölderlin,” Journal of Religion 87 (2) (2007): 183-205.
“‘To the Things Themselves’: Heidegger, the Baden School, and Religion,” New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Research 6 (2006): 127-146.
“Nietzsche, the Cross, and the Nature of God,” The Heythrop Journal 48 (2) (2007): 243-259.
“Dilthey’s Philosophy of Religion in the ‘Critique of Historical Reason’: 1880-1910,” Journal of the History of Ideas 66 (2005): 265-283.
“Heidegger’s Romantic Personalism,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 22 (2) (2005): 161-79.
“Philosophy, Worldview, and the Possibility of Ethics in Basic Problems of Phenomenology,” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 34 (2003): 184-204.
“Leibniz, Bayle, and Locke on Faith and Reason” (with Paul Lodge), American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 76 (4) (2003): 575-600.
“Resoluteness in the Middle Voice: On the Ethical Dimensions of Heidegger’s Being and Time,” Philosophy Today 45 (3) (2001): 225-241.
“The Philosophy of Awakening: Socrates, Heidegger, and Jaspers,” Dialogue 40 (1) (1997): 19-25.
Book Chapters
“Philosophy of Religion Since 1945: Resurgence and Renewal in a Secular Age,” forthcoming in The Cambridge History of Philosophy 1946-2010, ed. Kelly Michael Baker and Iain Thomson (Cambridge University Press).
“Phenomenological Hermeneutics in the Twentieth Century,” forthcoming in The Cambridge Companion to Hermeneutics, ed. Michael Forster and Kristin Gjesdal (Cambridge University Press).
“Hermeneutics and Historicized Idealism: Schleiermacher and Dilthey,” forthcoming in J.A. Shand, ed., A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Philosophy (Wiley-Blackwell).
“Dilthey on Ethics and Value Theory,” forthcoming in Eric S. Nelson, ed. Interpreting Dilthey: Critical Essays (Cambridge University Press).
“Entschlossenheit,” forthcoming in Mark Wrathall, ed., The Heidegger Lexicon (Cambridge University Press).
“Natur,” forthcoming in Mark Wrathall, ed., The Heidegger Lexicon (Cambridge University Press).
“Transcendental Philosophy as ‘Therapy of the Mind,” in Halla Kim and Steven Hoeltzl, eds., Transcendental Inquiry: Its History, Methods and Critiques (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
“Critique of Religion and Critical Religion in Fichte’s Addresses to the German Nation,” in Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore, eds., Fichte’s Addresses to the German Nation Reconsidered (SUNY Press, 2016).
“Jacobi on Kant, or Moral Naturalism vs. Idealism,” in Matthew C. Altman, ed., The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
“Idealism and Nihilism,” in Halla Kim and Steven Hoetzl, ed., Kant, Fichte, and the Legacy of German Idealism (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014).
“Phenomenology of Value and the Value of Phenomenology,” in Hans Pederson and Meg Altman, eds., Horizons of Authenticity in Phenomenology, Existentialism, and Moral Psychology: Essays in Honor of Charles B. Guignon (Heidelberg: Springer, 2014).
“Fichte’s Philosophical Bildungsroman,” in Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore, eds., Fichte’s Vocation of Man: New Interpretive and Critical Essays (Albany: SUNY Press, 2013): 33-44.
“Heidegger on the Apostle Paul,” in Peter Frick, ed., Paul in the Grip of the Philosophers: The Apostle and Contemporary Continental Philosophy (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2013): 39-56.
“Hermeneutic Rationality and Religion,” in Hans-Ulrich Lessing, Rudolf A. Makkreel, and Riccardo Pozzo, ed., Recent Contributions to Dilthey’s Philosophy of the Human Sciences (Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 2011): 157-176.
“Heidegger et le néokantisme de Bade: Critique de la philosophie des valeurs,” in S.-J. Arrien and S. Camilleri, ed., Le jeune Heidegger1909-1926 (J. Vrin, 2011): 75-93.
“Heidegger and the Prospect of a Hermeneutics of Prayer,” in The Phenomenology of Prayer, ed. Bruce Benson and Norman Wirzba (Fordham University Press, 2005): 119-34.
Book Reviews
“Peter L. Oesterreich and Hartmut Traub, Der Ganze Fichte: Die populäre, wissenschaftliche und metaphilosophische Erschließung der Welt (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2006),” forthcoming in Internationales Jahrbuch für Deutsche Idealismus.
“Judith Wolfe, Heidegger’s Eschatology: Theological Horizons in Martin Heidegger’s Early Work,” forthcoming in British Journal for the History of Philosophy.
“John H. Smith, Dialogues Between Faith and Reason: the Death and Return of God in Modern German Thought (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2011), Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, June 2012.
“Steven G. Crowell and Jeff Malpas, ed., Transcendental Heidegger (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2007),” Philosophy in Review/Comptes rendus philosophiques 29 (5) (2009): 323-325.
“Frank Schalow, The Incarnality of Being: The Earth, Animals, and the Body in Heidegger’s Thought (Albany: SUNY Press, 2006),” Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture and Ecology 12 (1) (2008): 95-97.
“Iain D. Thomson, Heidegger on Ontotheology: Technology and the Politics of Education (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005),” Philosophy in Review/Comptes rendus philosophiques 26 (1) (2006): 301-303.
Presentations (invited and refereed)
2017, “Ethical Nihilism and the Nihilism of Ethics,” Southwest Seminar in Continental Philosophy, California State University, Northridge.
2017, “‘. . . endless void all around’: Jacobi and the Nature of Ethical Nihilism,” Workshop on Late Modern Philosophy, Boston University.
2016, “Dilthey’s Practical Categories,” Southwest Seminar in Continental Philosophy, Texas A & M University.
2015, “Truth Is No Stranger to Fiction: Jacobi on Fiction in the Novel Allwill,” Reconsidering the Significance of Kant’s Critical Revolution in Philosophy: Practical Postulates and Philosophical Fictions, Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
2015, “Dilthey and the Possibility of a Modern Lebenstimmung,” Southwest Seminar in Continental Philosophy, Northern Arizona University.
2015, “Transcendental Philosophy as Therapy of the Mind: Fichte’s ‘Facts of Consciousness’ Lectures,” Conference on Transcendental Philosophy and Metaphysics, Osaka University, Japan.
2014, “Dilthey’s Theory of Worldviews and the Formation of a Modern Lebenstimmung,” North American Society for Philosophical Hermeneutics, Roanoke, Va.
2014, “Critical Religion and the Critique of Religion,” North American Fichte Society, University of Utah.
2014, “Jacobi’s Practical Path,” Southwest Seminar in Continental Philosophy, Colorado College.
2013, “Husserl and the Meaning of Life,” Faculdade de Ciêcias Sociais e Humanas, Lisbon, Portugal.
2013, “Husserl and the Meaning of Life,” Southwest Seminar in Continental Philosophy, Texas A & M University
2012, “Love, Idolatry, and Atheism” Southwest Seminar in Continental Philosophy, Brigham Young University
2012, “Just the Facts? Methodological Issues in Fichte’s Facts of Consciousness Lectures (1810-1811),” North American Fichte Society, Quebec, Canada
2012, “Idealism and Nihilism,” Inaugural Conference for Kant, Fichte, and the Legacy of German Idealism, Omaha, NE
2012, “Reason and Cultus,” Society for Systematic Philosophy, Central Division APA, Chicago, IL
2011, “Fichte on Autonomy, Agency, and Religion,” Southwest Seminar in Continental Philosophy, Denver, Colorado.
2010, “Fichte’s Philosophical Novel,” North American Fichte Society, Lisbon, Portugal.
2010, “Appropriating Schleiermacher: Heidegger, Reinach, and the Birth of the Phenomenology of Religion,” Inaugural Meeting of the Southwest Seminar in Continental Philosophy, University of New Mexico.
2009, “‘Living Beings, Not Speculating Chimeras,” Department of Philosophy, Utah State University.
2008, “What It Takes To Be an Irrationalist,” Department of Philosophy, University of Utah.
2008, “Exposing the Threadbare Mask: Heidegger’s Critique of Neo-Kantian Value-Theory,” 2008 meeting of the Martin Heidegger-Forschungsgruppe, Messkirch, Germany.
2008, “Fichte, the Highest Good and Practical Deliberation,” North American Fichte Society, Chicago, IL.
2006, “Revisionism and Religion in Fichte,” Department of Philosophy, University of Utah
2006, "Why Authenticity Matters: Practice and Theory in Being and Time and Before," (with Charles Guignon), 40th Annual North American Heidegger Conference, Boston, MA.
2006, “The Origins of Authenticity,” Pacific Division APA Meeting, Portland, OR.
2005, “Heidegger on Authenticity and Philosophy,” Department of Philosophy, University of Utah.
2004, “On the Track of the Fugitive Gods: Heidegger, Luther, and Hölderlin,” 34th Annual Meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, October 28-30, Memphis, TN.
2000, “Resoluteness in the Middle Voice: On the Ethical Dimensions of Heidegger’s Being and Time,” Mid-South Philosophy Conference, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN.
Teaching Experience
Mean evaluations for courses taught since 2008 in parentheses.
Boston University
Introduction to Philosophy
Introduction to Chinese Philosophy
History of Modern Philosophy
CAS Core Curriculum: Ancient Worlds
Introduction to Ethics
History of Ethics
University of Utah
Early Modern Philosophy (5.9/6)
Existentialism
German Idealism (Senior Seminar in Philosophy) (5.8/6)
Honors Intellectual Traditions: The World of Antiquity (5.5/6)
Honors Intellectual Traditions: Medieval Christianity and Renaissance Humanism (5.7/6)
Honors Intellectual Traditions: The Rise of Modernity (5.8/6)
Introduction to Philosophy: God, Faith, and Reason
Nineteenth-Century Philosophy (5.9/6)
Philosophy of Religion (5.8/6)
Philosophy of Religion (Senior Seminar in Philosophy)
World Religions (5.5/6)
Tulane University
Philosophies of the Self
History of Modern Philosophy
Contemporary European Philosophy
Philosophy of Religion
Religion in the Modern World
Honors and Awards
2015-presentScholarly Editions and Translations Grant, National Endowment for the Humanities (Principal Investigator: James Reid).
2003-2004 Graduate Prize Fellowship, Center for Ethics and Public Affairs, Murphy Institute of Political Economy, Tulane University.
1999-2003 Teaching Assistantship, Department of Philosophy, Tulane University.
1998-1999 Graduate School Fellowship, Department of Philosophy, Tulane University.
1998 Robert Shoemaker Award, Department of Philosophy, Hendrix College.
Affiliations
American Philosophical Association
Heidegger Circle
International Adam Smith Society
Martin-Heidegger-Forschungsgruppe
North American Fichte Society
North American Society for Philosophical Hermeneutics
Society for Continental Philosophy and Theology
Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy
Reviewing
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly
Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie
Epoche: A Journal for the History of Philosophy
European Journal of Philosophy
Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy
Journal of Religion
Journal of Chinese Philosophy
Continental Philosophy Review
Journal of Religious History
Sophia
Southern Journal of Philosophy
Professional Service
University of Utah
Religious Studies Program Steering Committee (2012-2015)
Religious Studies Program Curriculum Committee (2012-2015
Department of Philosophy, University of Utah
Undergraduate Committee
Conference Organizing
2014 North American Fichte Society (host and organizer), University of Utah.
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