Christopher Lauer 
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
email: lauer3@hawaii.edu
Office: 228 Kanakaole Hall
Office Phone: 974-7477
While it’s something I’m working on remedying, at the moment I’m about as haole as they come. After growing up in Texas and Kansas, attending college and grad school in California, Pennsylvania, and Germany, I just joined the faculty at UH Hilo in Fall 2011 to teach the department’s history of philosophy sequence (PHIL 211 and PHIL 213). So yes, you’re probably right when you run into me and suspect I have no idea where I’m going, but I’m very grateful for suggestions and will try to pretend like I’m not embarrassed when you find me walking mauka when I should be walking makai. My primary research interests are in German idealism and the ethics of recognition, and I’m currently at work on a book on intimacy. Addressing such dimensions as gift-giving, physical touch, fetishes, irony, and mourning, the book will argue that every demand for intimacy is contradictory in its very structure and yet that we should not relax into the deconstructive position that intimacy as such is impossible. The book draws widely on the philosophical tradition with a particular focus on recent French and German philosophy and also borrows some important insights from work in psychology, economics, anthropology, and sociology. My publishers won’t let me post copies of the articles listed below, but if any sound interesting, feel free to email me, and I’ll promise never to check back to see if you’ve actually read them.
Pictured above with me are my wife Quyen and son Clancy. They’re the cute ones, and I’m the one having difficulty paying attention.
Brief CV:
Education:
B.A. in Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley, 2001
DAAD Scholar, Freiburg (Germany), 2004-5
PhD in Philosophy, Penn State University, 2007
Books
Intimacy: A Dialectical Study (in progress)
The Suspension of Reason in Hegel and Schelling, London: Continuum Press, 2010
Articles
“Affirmative Pathology: Spinoza and Hegel on Illness and
Self-Repair,” forthcoming in Between Hegel
and Spinoza: A Volume of Critical Essays, edited
by Hasana Sharp and Jason E. Smith (London:
Continuum, 2012).
“States of Peace: Ricoeur on
Recognition and the Gift,” forthcoming in From
Ricoeur to Action, edited by Todd Mei and David Lewin (London: Continuum, 2012).
“Multivalent Recognition: The Place of Hegel in the Fraser-Honneth Debate,” Contemporary
Political Theory, 11: 1 (2012), 23-40.
“Schelling’s Unfinished Dialogue: Reason and Personality in
the Letter to Eschenmayer,” forthcoming in Schelling’s Freedom Essay: A Casebook, edited by Jason Wirth.
“Sovereign Gratitude: Hegel on Religion and the Gift,” Research in Phenomenology, 41: 3 (2011),
374-395.
“Kierkegaard and Aristophanes on the Suspension of Irony,” Idealistic Studies, 39: 1-3 (2010),
125-136.
“Kant and Jealousy in Derrida’s Glas,” The Journal of the British Society for
Phenomenology, 40: 1 (2009), 54-65.
“Reason
at Play: The Place of Schellingian Childishness in
the Phenomenology’s Dialectic of Reason,” The Owl of Minerva, 37:
2 (2007), 57-75.
“Spinoza’s Third Kind of Knowledge as a Resource for
Schelling’s Empiricism,” Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, 18 (2007), 168-181.
“Space, Science, and Self-Sacrifice in the Phenomenology’s
‘Absolute Knowing,’” Idealistic Studies, 36: 3 (2006), 169-181
Presentations
“Irigaray and
Kierkegaard on God and Intimacy,” meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and
Existential Philosophy, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, October 21, 2011.
“Beauvoir and Kierkegaard on Embedding and Irony,” meeting
of the Pacific Association for the Continental Tradition, Seattle, Washington,
October 7, 2011
“Beyond Restlessness: Hegel on Becoming
the Negative,” Meeting of the Ontario Hegel Association, Ottawa, Ontario, April
2, 2011.
“Bourdieu and Derrida on the
Paradox of Gift-Giving,” Colloquium on Unreflective
Action, Newark, New Jersey, March 22, 2011
“Beauvoir
and Nancy on Touching and Borders,” Anzaldua Speakers
Series, Edinburg, Texas, February 17, 2011.
“Intimacy,
Dialectics, and Deconstruction,” Morgan State Invited Speakers Series,
Baltimore, Maryland, October 29, 2010
“Sovereign Gratitude: Hegel on Religion and the Gift of
Nature,” Meeting of the Ontario Hegel Organization, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
March 20, 2010.
“States of Peace: Ricoeur and
Fichte on Gestures of Recognition,” Meeting of the Society for Ricoeur Studies, Arlington, Virginia, October 31, 2009.
“The ‘Unceasing Wound of Love’: Schelling, Hesiod, and
Lucretius on the Gift of Nature,” Meeting of the Pacific Association for the
Continental Tradition, Seattle, October 9, 2009.
“Kierkegaard’s Suspension of Socratic Irony,” Meeting of the
International Association for Philosophy and Literature, London, England, June
3, 2009.
“Schelling’s Second Thoughts on Second
Nature,” Second Nature: Rethinking the
Natural through Politics, Evanston, Illinois, February 9, 2007.
“Historiographical
Necessity Heidegger’s Beiträge and Hegel’s Differenzschrift,” Meeting of the British Society
for the History of Philosophy, Cambridge, England, April 5, 2006.
„Räumlichkeit,
Sprache, und der Ort der Ethik in Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes,“
Symposium on Die Ethik des deutschen Idealismus, Freiburg,
Germany,
January 18, 2005.
“The Inadequacy of the Understanding
and Inexhaustibility of Reason in Schelling’s Naturphilosophie,”
Collegium Phaenomenologicum,
Città di Castello, Italy, July 17, 2004.
“Heidegger’s 1936 Schelling Lectures and the Impossibility
of System in the Beiträge,” Philosophy, Interpretation and Culture,
Binghamton, NY, April 17, 2004.
Courses Taught
At University
of Hawai’i at Hilo
Introduction
to Western Philosophy, every semester
Ethical
Theory, Spring 2012
Modern
Philosophy, Spring 2012
Ancient
Philosophy, Fall 2011
Heidegger,
Fall 2011
At Indiana
University of Pennsylvania
Ethics,
Fall 2010
At Clarion
University
Nursing Ethics, Spring 2010
At
Penn State University
Modern Philosophy, Spring
2009
Philosophy and Literature in Western Culture, Spring
2009
Persons, Moral Values, and the Good Life, Spring
2009
Ancient Philosophy, Fall
2008
Persons, Moral Values, and the Good Life, Fall 2008
Basic Problems of Philosophy, Spring 2008
Persons, Moral Values, and the Good Life, Spring
2008
Wittgenstein, Fall 2007
Basic Problems of Philosophy, Fall 2007
Twentieth Century Philosophy, Fall 2006
Persons, Moral Values, and the Good Life, Spring 2006
Basic Problems of Philosophy, Fall 2005
Introduction to Bioethics, Spring 2004
Relativism, Absolutism, and Moral Reasoning, Summer 2003
Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind, Spring 2003
Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, Fall 2002