Michael Lewis

Date of Birth: 9th November 1977

Nationality:British

E-mail:

Website:

Education

2000–2004 PhDin Philosophy, University of Warwick, Thesis Title: Being-with and the Place of Ethics. Supervisor: Miguel de Beistegui. Examiners: Paul Davies, Alexander García Düttmann

1999–2000 MAin Continental Philosophy, Distinction, University of Essex

1996–99 BA (Hons) in Philosophy, First Class, University of Warwick

1994–96 A-Levels in Computer Studies (A), General Studies (A), Mathematics (B), Sociology (A); A/S-Level in English Language (A), Burleigh Community College, Loughborough, U.K.

Employment

2016–Research Associate, Sussex Rights and Justice Research Centre, School of Global Studies, University of Sussex

2011–15Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of the West of England

2011Lecturer in Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, University of Sussex

2010Teaching Assistant, Department of Philosophy, University of Warwick

2009–2010Visiting Fellow, Department of Philosophy, University of Sussex

2007–2008Lecturer in Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, University of Sussex

2006–Private tutor, Alpha Tutors, U.K.

2001–5Graduate Teaching Assistant, Department of Philosophy, University of Warwick

Publications

MONOGRAPHS

  • Derrida and Lacan: Another Writing (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), xii + 282pp.
  • Heidegger Beyond Deconstruction: On Nature (London; New York: Continuum, 2007) (Paperback edition, 2013), xiii + 184pp.
  • Heidegger and the Place of Ethics: Being-with in the Crossing of Heidegger’s Thought(London; New York: Continuum, 2005) (Paperback edition, 2013), xiv + 212pp.

In preparation:

  • Logic, Ontology, Politics: A Philosophical Reading of Agamben (due for completion, December 2016).
  • The Animal’s Sincerity and Fossilised Dialectic (due for completion, early 2017)
  • The Reinvention of Man: Philosophy and Anthropology (in preparation, planned for completion in 2018).

CO-AUTHORED BOOK

  • (with Tanja Staehler) Phenomenology: An Introduction (London; New York: Continuum, 2010) (Paperback and Hardback editions), 268pp.

ARTICLES and BOOK CHAPTERS

  • ‘Heidegger and Žižek: On Political and Non-Political Action at the End of History’ in Louiza Odysseos & Antonio Cerella (eds.), Heidegger and the Global Age. (London: Rowman and Littlefield International, 2017).
  • ‘On Thinking at the End of the World: Derrida, Lyotard, Bataille’ in William Stronge (ed.), The New Bataille (London: Bloomsbury, 2016).
  • ‘Of (Auto-)Immune Life: Derrida, Esposito, Agamben’ inDarian Meacham (ed.), Medicine and Society: New Perspectivesin Continental Philosophy (Dordrecht: Springer, 2015), 18pp.
  • ‘Of a Mythical Philosophical Anthropology: the Transcendental and the Empirical in Technics and Time’ in Gerald Moore and Christina Howells (eds.), Stiegler and Technology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 15pp.
  • ‘Structure and Genesis in Derrida and Lacan: Animality and the Empirical Sciences’ in Lorenzo Chiesa (ed.), The Journal of European Psychoanalysis 32, ‘Lacan and Philosophy: The New Generation’ (2011). Re-published as a book by re.press, 2014.
  • ‘Lacan’ in The Continuum Companion to Continental Philosophy (now The Bloomsbury Companion) (London; New York: Continuum, 2009).
  • ‘Reply to Žižek’ in The International Journal of Žižek Studies, 1:4 (2007).
  • ‘Individuation in Levinas and Heidegger: The One and the Incompleteness of Beings’ in Philosophy Today, 51:2 (Summer 2007).
  • ‘Between Nature and Culture: Heidegger and Žižek on the Thing and the Subject’ in The Journal for Lacanian Studies, 4:2 (Autumn 2006).
  • ‘Response to Rafael Winkler’ in Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, 17 (2006).
  • ‘God and Politics in Later Heidegger’ in Philosophy Today, 48:4/5 (Winter 2004).

Submitted:

  • ‘On the Relation between Transcendental Philosophy and Empirical Science in Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics’ (submitted for publication, under consideration).

In preparation:

  • ‘Anthropology from Kant and Hegel to the Present Day’.
  • ‘Stiegler after Derrida: a Return of History’.
  • ‘Beyond Transcendentalism and Naturalism: Merleau-Ponty and Derrida’.
  • ‘A Commentary on Lacan’s ‘Lituraterre’.

CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

‘The Human Animal: Philosophy and Science in Heidegger’s Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics’in Proceedings of the 13th International Society for the Study of European Ideas (ISSEI) International Conference, University of Cyprus, July 2nd-6th, 2012.

BOOK REVIEWS

  • Review of Moustafa Safouan, Four Lessons in Psychoanalysis in Metapsychology Online, June 18th 2005.
  • Review of Encounters with Alphonso Lingis in Philosophy in Review/Comptes Rendus Philosophiques24: 6 (December 2004).
  • Review of Véronique Fóti, Vision’s Invisibles: Philosophical Explorations in Metapsychology Online, August 19th 2004.

Presentations

— University of Bristol, ‘The Animal’s Sincerity and Fossilised Dialectic’, European Philosophy Workshop, Invited Speaker, Tuesday 30th August 2016.

— University of Brighton/Brighton and Sussex Medical School, ‘Life and the Machine: The Mechanics of Esposito’s Thought’, Symposium on Immunity, Health and the Body Politic, Saturday 30th April 2016.

— European University at St. Petersburg, ‘Beauty and the Beast: Kant and the Animal’s Charm’, Invited Speaker,Friday 13thNovember 2015.

— European University at St. Petersburg, ‘The End of the World from Bataille to Meillassoux’, Invited Speaker, Monday 9th November 2015.

— University of Sussex, ‘Žižek and Heidegger: on political and non-political action’,Heidegger and the Global Age conference, Friday 30th October 2015.

— University College Dublin, ‘Kant’s and Hegel’s Anthropologies’, Wednesday 17th June 2015.

— University of the West of England,‘Agamben and Derrida: The Critique of Metaphysics and Positive Biopolitics’, Italian Biopolitical Theory: Life, Power and Theology Conference (Friday 13th March–Saturday 14th March 2015), Keynote speaker, Saturday 14th March 2015.

— University College Cork, ‘On Philosophical Anthropology as a Solution to the Dilemma of man’, Thursday 26th February 2015.

— University of the West of England, ‘What is the work of art?’Philosophy of Art – Sixth Form Conference. Friday 20th February 2015.

— University of Leiden, ‘Introduction to Phenomenology’, Thursday 18th December 2014.

— University of Kent, ‘Stiegler after Derrida: of a Return of History’,General Organology conference, Saturday 22nd November 2014.

— Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution, ‘Philosophical Anthropology from Kant and Hegel to the Present Day’, invited speaker, Tuesday 4th November 2014.

— Utrecht University, ‘Kant’s and Hegel’s Anthropologies’, Society for European Philosophy conference,Thursday 4th September 2014.

— Jan van Eyck Academy, Berlin, ‘Stiegler after Derrida: The Return of History’, Thursday 24th July 2014.

— University of Sussex, ‘Response to Joseph Cohen’, Seminar on Heidegger’s Time and Being, invited speaker, Saturday 15th June 2013.

— University of Kent, ‘Beyond Transcendentalism and Naturalism’, invited speaker, Monday 3rd June 2013.

— Birkbeck College, ‘Phenomenology: An Introduction’, invited speaker, London, Tuesday 30th April 2013.

— University of the West of England, ‘Man, the “Undetermined Animal”: Philosophy and Science in Heidegger’s Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics’, Abbreviated version, Wednesday 28th November 2012.)

—University of Nicosia, Cyprus,‘Man, the “Undetermined Animal”: Philosophy and Science in Heidegger’s Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics’, Phenomenology Towards the Crisis Workshop, International Society for the Study of European Ideasconference, Wednesday 4th July 2012.

— University of Bristol, ‘Žižek’s Ontology: The One Differing in Itself’, Critical Thinking Reading Group, invited speaker, Wednesday 27th June 2012.

— University of Cambridge, Cambridge University Social Anthropology Society (CUSAS), Division of Social Anthropology, ‘Philosophers’ Anthropologies’, invited speaker, Thursday 15th March 2012.

— KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, ‘Response to Adrian Johnston’, invited speaker, The Human Animal in Politics, Science, and Psychoanalysis workshop, Thursday 16th December - Friday 17th December 2011.

— NTNU, Trondheim, Norway, ‘Beyond Transcendentalism and Naturalism: Merleau-Ponty and Derrida’, Abbreviated version. Wednesday 5th October 2011.

— University of Sussex, ‘Beyond Transcendentalism and Naturalism: Merleau-Ponty and Derrida’, invited speaker, Philosophy Society, Friday 27th May 2011.

— University of Brighton,‘Agamben’s Affirmative Biopolitics and the Immunitary Paradigm’, invited speaker, Critical Studies Research Group, Monday 28th March 2011.

— University of Cambridge, Churchill College, ‘Sartre on Contingency: Philosophy, Empirical Science, Literature’, invited speaker, Friday 25th February 2011.

— University of Warwick, ‘Agamben’s Affirmative Biopolitics and the Immunitary Paradigm’, invited speaker, Research Seminar in Post-Kantian Philosophy, Tuesday 18th January 2011.

— Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht, ‘Structure and Genesis in Derrida and Lacan: Animality and the Empirical Sciences’, invited speaker, Wednesday 26th May 2010.

— University of Sussex, ‘Philosophy and the Natural Sciences’, invited speaker, Sussex Undergraduate Philosophy Society, Wednesday 29th April 2009.

— Manchester Metropolitan University, ‘Agamben’s Critique of Derrida: Living Without the Trace’, invited speaker, Human Sciences Seminar, Thursday 26th February 2009.

—University of Sussex, ‘Deleuze the Existentialist’, invited speaker, Philosophy Society, Friday 6th June 2008.

— University of Sussex, ‘Nietzsche and the Overcoming of Nihilism’, invited speaker, Undergraduate Philosophy Society, Wednesday 27th February 2008.

— University of Auckland, ‘The Genesis of the Transcendental’, invited speaker, Research Seminar, Department of Philosophy, Tuesday 21st August 2007.

— University of Warwick, ‘Lacan and Derrida on the Genetic and the Transcendental’, invited speaker, Centre for Research in Philosophy and Literature, Tuesday 13th March 2007.

— University of Reading, ‘Heidegger and Marxism’, Society for European Philosophy conference, Thursday 8th September 2005.

— University of Warwick, ‘Heidegger, Laclau, Žižek, and the Analysis of Ideology’, Research Day, Department of Philosophy, Friday 28th May 2004.

Current Research

My long-term research project concerns the question of the relation between animals and humans, and in particular addresses the resurgence of philosophical anthropology in contemporary continental philosophy.

My investigations into philosophical anthropology all explore the idea, characteristic of philosophical anthropology from at least Herder onwards, and developed with particular rigour by the philosophical anthropology from Germany in the first half of the twentieth century, that man is a lacking being.

The question associated with this is whether and how the notion of a negativity or lack can be assigned to man, and what meaning this lack has. For instance, can it be empirically specified in a prospective way from the point of view of the animal man once was, or is it something that can be attributed only retrospectively or transcendentally, from the point of view of human being already fully emerged.

This project is still ongoing and will be brought closer to completion with three forthcoming books on human and animal life: one on Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, which will be devoted to the concept of life in contemporary continental philosophy, entitled,Logic, Ontology, Politics: A Philosophical Reading of Agamben (due for completion in December 2016), one on the nature of the animal in Kant and Hegel, entitled provisionally, The Animal’s Sincerity and Fossilised Dialectic (due for completion inNovember 2016), and one much more ambitious text on philosophical anthropology from Kant and Hegel to the present day, The Reinvention of Man: Philosophy and Anthropology (planned for completion in 2018).

The published outcomes of my research in the recent past and immediate future include at least five distinct works: ‘Of a Mythical Philosophical Anthropology’ (in the volume, Stiegler and Technics, Edinburgh University Press, 2013), ‘Of (Auto-)Immune Life: Derrida, Esposito, Agamben’ (in Medicine and Society, Springer,2015), ‘On Thinking at the End of the World: Derrida, Lyotard, Bataille’ (in The New Bataille, Bloomsbury, 2016), ‘Heidegger and Žižek:On Political and Non-Political Action at the End of History’ (in Heidegger and the Global Age, Rowman and Littlefield, 2017), and finally, ‘The Relation between Transcendental Philosophy and Empirical Science in Heidegger’s Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics’.

More generally, this work around humans, animals, and anthropology is part of, and indeed the hinge of a much larger project, which is dividing into two parallel streams: a philosophy of nature, and a history of the notion of the transcendental.

In the context of the first stream I am particularly interested in the question of life, habit, the nature of repetition, automatism, and the machine. More generally, this feeds into my concern with ecological, environmental questions, to which my current work on the relation between animal(s) and man is related. And it has recently led me to an examination of various theories of sensation and touch, and particularly Derrida’s later work on animality, life and touching, which I am keen to develop, particularly in terms of the notion of ‘auto-immunity’. This is all intended as a preliminary to my contribution to the current debates on ‘biopolitics’ and ‘bioethics’.

In addition, I have an abiding interest in the critique of Ideology, particularly in the work of Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Žižek. I am also currently writing on several other contemporary and recent continental philosophers, including Roberto Esposito, Jean-Luc Nancy, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Luc Marion, andthe ‘speculative materialists’.

Teaching Experience

University of Roehampton

  • Continental Philosophy, 2016–17. Third Year. Lectures and Seminars.
  • Modern Philosophy, 2016–17. First Year. Lectures and Seminars.

University of the West of England

  • The Death of God and the Meaning of Life, 2012–15. First Year. Lectures and Seminars (Anselm, Kant, Jacobi, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Kafka, Jaspers, Ortega y Gasset, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus).
  • Film and Philosophy (with Patrick Crogan), 2012–14. Third Year. Lectures and Seminars (Bergson, Kracauer, Benjamin, Adorno, Lacan, Althusser, Deleuze, Stiegler, Žižek, Film Theory [Mary Ann Doane, Jean-Louis Baudry, Christian Metz]).
  • Ethics, 2011–12.Second Year. Lectures and Seminars (Kant, Levinas).
  • Nineteenth Century German Philosophy, 2011–15. Second Year. Lectures and Seminars (Jacobi, Hegel, Marx, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche. 2013–15: including Fichte and Feuerbach).
  • Introduction to Philosophy, 2011–12. First Year. Lectures and Seminars (Critical Thinking, Formal Logic). Renamed Critical Thinking, 2014–15, to include Frankfurt School Critical Theory.
  • Metaphysics, 2011–12. Second year. Seminars.

University of Sussex

Undergraduate courses:

  • 19th and 20th Century European Philosophy, 2007–2008. Third year undergraduate course. Lectures (Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Saussure, Derrida, Levi-Strauss, Lacan).
  • Phenomenology, 2007–2008 & 2010–11. Second year undergraduate course. Lectures and seminars (Husserl, Derrida, Heidegger, Levinas, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Marion).
  • Heidegger, 2007–2008 & 2008–2009. Third year undergraduate course. Lectures and seminars.
  • Introduction to Philosophy, 2007–2008 & 2008–2009. First year undergraduate course. Seminars.

Graduate courses:

  • Phenomenology, 2008–2009. Lectures (On the Limits of Phenomenology: Husserl, Heidegger, Marion).
  • Continental Aesthetics, 2007–2008 & 2010–11. Lectures (On Art and Truth: Plato, Kant, Heidegger, Benjamin, Adorno, Lyotard [2007–8] & On Darstellung and Mimesis:Winckelmann, Hölderlin, Hegel, Heidegger, Derrida, Nancy, Lacoue-Labarthe, Merleau-Ponty [2010–11]).

University of Warwick

  • 20th Century Continental Philosophy (Sartre), 2009–2010. Second and third year undergraduate course. Seminars.
  • Ethics, 2002–2003. Second and third year undergraduate course. Seminars.
  • Introduction to Logic/Meaning and Inference, 2001–2005. First year undergraduate course. Seminars and revision lectures.
  • Student Support Teacher, University of Warwick, 2000–2002. Individual tutorials with a dyslexic student from the Department of Philosophy.

PhD Students

Rauli Nykanen, Thesis topic: Kant and Space, University of the West of England, 2012–

Christopher Hose, Thesis topic: Whitehead and the Presence of Value in Nature, University of the West of England, 2012–

PhD Students successfully completed

Zoe Sutherland, On Contemporary Art; Analytic and Phenomenological Perspectives, University of Sussex, 2012.

PhD Theses examined

Carole Ramsey, Open-Endedness: Toward an Encounter with Alterity, University of Queensland, October 2012. External Examiner.

AngelosEvangelou, Logos, Bios and Madness in Nietzsche, Bataille, Foucault and Derrida. University of Kent, June 2013. External Examiner.

Marco Piasentier, The Dancing God. One Monotheism, Two Doctrines: Giorgio Agamben, Roberto Esposito, and Davide Tarizzo on the Philosophy of Biopolitics. University of Kent, March 2015. External Examiner.

Mesut Malik Yavuz, Death, Freedom and Narrative Thinking: Existential Analytics, University of Durham, January 2016. External Examiner.

Other Experience

2013-Programme Leader for Philosophy, UWE (equivalent of Director of Undergraduate Studies). Member of Faculty Board (equivalent of Senate).

2011-Organiser of visiting speaker and work in progress seminar series, including the series on ‘The Philosophy of Nature’, UWE. Maintainer of department website (uwephilosophy.org.uk), and social media channels, UWE.

Library representative, UWE.

2010–13AQA Examiner (A-levels, United Kingdom).

2007–2008Assistant Director, conference organiser, seminar leader, and web-site designer for the Collegium Phaenomenologicum, ‘Belief after Reason’, Città di Castello, Umbria, Italy, July 12th–August 2nd 2008

April 2004–2007, 2011 Assistant Editor of the Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain

July 2005–Reader and Referee for Routledge, Edinburgh University Press, Continuum Publishing (now Bloomsbury), Inquiry, the Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain, the Journal of Classical Sociology, andthe Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics, Journal of Critical Animal Studies, South African Journal of Philosophy,Kemanusiaan: The Asian Journal of Humanities, the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, Stasis (European University at St. Petersburg), London Journal in Critical Thought.

Peer-reviewer for the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), U.K., The British Academy, the Mind Association, and the Leverhulme trust.

International Advisory Board for the Genoa School of Humanities

Languages

I have a reading knowledge of the following languages:

  • Modern German (Postgraduate Classes with Nicholas Walker at the University of Essex, 1999–2000, Postgraduate Classes at the University of Warwick, 2000–2001)
  • Modern French (self-taught)
  • Ancient Greek (Postgraduate course with Frank Beetham at the University of Warwick, 2000–2001)

Areas of Specialisation

  • Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Continental European Philosophy (especially, Agamben, Esposito, Derrida, Heidegger, Levinas, Lacan, Žižek)
  • Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (especially Heidegger, Marion, Henry)

Areas of Competence

  • Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Post-Kantian European Philosophy (Hegel, Nietzsche in particular)
  • The Critique of Ideology (Laclau, Žižek)
  • Aesthetics (particularly Kant and Hegel’s)