Professor Sara Heinämaa and Professor Jean-Luc Marion appointed Gadamer Chairs

The Philosophy Department is pleased to announce the appointment of two Gadamer Chairs who are scheduled to visit Boston College in the near future.

In Spring 2021 [COVID restrictions permitting] Professor Sara Heinämaa, Academy Professor at the Finnish Academy (2017–2021) and Professor in the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, will visit Boston College as Gadamer Professor. Prof. Heinämaa’s work deals with the phenomena and concepts of embodiment, intersubjectivity, temporality, normality, emotions and sexual difference. Her research is situated in the philosophies of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Stein, Beauvoir, Levinas, and Irigaray, but she has also contributed to Descartes studies and to the discussion of classical existentialism. Professor Heinämaa’s current research project, Marginalization and Experience:Phenomenological Analyses of Normality and Abnormality (MEPA), studies the foundations of human sociality and communality and the role of experiential normality and abnormality in the constitution of human Mitsein and intersubjectivity more generally. This project is funded by the Academy of Finland and by the University of Jyväskylä. Her books include: Birth, Death, and Femininity: Philosophies of Embodiment, co-authored with Robin May Schott, Vigdis Songe-Møller and Sigridur Thorgeirsdottir (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010) and Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference: Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir (Lanham, Boulder, New York, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). Recent articles include: “Two ways of understanding persons: A Husserlian distinction,” Phenomenology and Mind, no. 15, eds. Roberta De Monticelli and Francesca De Vecchi, Firenze University Press, 2019, pp. 92–103; “Strange vegetation: Emotive undercurrents of Tove Jansson’s Moominvalley in November,” SATS, Nordic Journal of Philosophy, vol. 19, no. 1, 2018, pp.41–67; “On the complexity and wholeness of human beings: Husserlian perspectives,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies, vol.25, no. 3, 2017, pp.393–406; “Anonymity and personhood: Merleau-Ponty’s account of the subject of perception,” Continental Philosophy Review, vol. 48, no. 2, 2015, pp.123–142; “’An equivocal couple overwhelmed with life’: A phenomenological analysis of pregnancy,” philoSOPHIA, vol. 4, no. 1, 2014, pp.12–49; “Varieties of presence: Heidegger’s and Husserl’s accounts of the useful and the valuable,” Parrhesia, no. 13, 2011, pp.28–40; and “The self and the others: Common topics for Husserl and Wittgenstein,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, vol. 13, 2011, pp.28–40.

Also scheduled to visit in the near future (COVID restrictions permitting) as Gadamer Professor is Professor Jean-Luc Marion, Member of the Académie française, and Emeritus Professor atthe Université Paris-Sorbonne, and Professor at The University of Chicago and the Institut Catholique de Paris. Prof. Marion is a world renowned philosopher and Catholic theologian. An expert on Descartes, he has published widely in phenomenology of religion, especially on the notion of the gift and on the concept of God who is beyond being. His books include: God Without Being, University of Chicago Press, 1991. [Dieu sans l'être; Hors-texte, Paris: Librarie Arthème Fayard, (1982)]; Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger and Phenomenology, Northwestern University Press, 1998. [Réduction et donation: recherches sue Husserl, Heidegger et la phénoménologie, (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1989)]; Cartesian Questions: Method and Metaphysics, University of Chicago Press, 1999. [Questions cartésiennes I: Méthode et métaphysique, (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1991)]; On Descartes' Metaphysical Prism: The Constitution and the Limits of Onto-theo-logy in Cartesian Thought, University of Chicago Press, 1999. [Sur le prisme métaphysique de Descartes. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1986)]; The Idol and Distance: Five Studies, Fordham University Press, 2001. [L'idole et la distance: cinq études, (Paris: B Grasset, 1977)]; Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, Stanford University Press, 2002. [Étant donné. Essai';une phénoménologie de la donation, (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1997)]; In Excess: Studies of Saturated Phenomena, Fordham University Press, 2002. [De surcroit: études sur les phénomenes saturés, (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2001)]; Prolegomena to Charity, Fordham University Press, 2002. [Prolégomènes á la charité, (Paris: E.L.A. La Différence, 1986]; The Crossing of the Visible, Stanford University Press, 2004. [La Croisée du visible, (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996)]; The Erotic Phenomenon: Six Meditations, University of Chicago Press, 2007. [Le phénomene érotique: Six méditations, (Paris: Grasset, 2003)]; On the Ego and on God, Fordham University Press, 2007. [Questions cartésiennes II: Sur l'ego et sur Dieu, (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996)]; The Visible and the Revealed, Fordham University Press, 2008. [Le visible et le révélé. (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2005)]; The Reason of the Gift (Richard Lectures), (University of Virginia Press, 2011); In the Self's Place: The Approach of St. Augustine, Stanford University Press, 2012. [Au lieu de soi, (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2008)]; Givenness & Hermeneutics (Pere Marquette Lectures in Theology), Marquette University Press, 2013; Negative Certainties, University of Chicago Press, 2015. [Certitudes négatives. (Paris: Editions Grasset & Fasquelle, 2009)]; Givenness and Revelation (Gifford Lectures), Oxford University Press, 2016; Believing in Order to See: On the Rationality of Revelation and the Irrationality of Some Believers, Fordham University Press, 2017; Descartes’ Grey Ontology: Cartesian Science and Aristotelian Thought in the Regulae, St. Augustine’s Press, Forthcoming – August 2017. His latest book is D’ailleurs la Révélation (2020).