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Dr Dalia Nassar

Dalia Nassar is a DECRA Fellow in the Philosophy Department. From 2004-2007 she was a Graduate Research Fellow at the Philosophisches Seminar at the Karls-Eberhard Universität – Tübingen and in 2009-2010 a fellow of the Thyssen Stiftung at Universität Lüneburg. She is also assistant professor of philosophy at Villanova University.

Research interests include: Kant and German idealism; the idea of nature and the history of natural philosophy; environmental philosophy and ethics.

Current research project is a philosophical account of the idea of nature in German philosophy from 1780-1850, beginning with Kant and concluding with the naturalist (natural historian), Alexander von Humboldt. My first aim is to delineate a non-reductive empiricist tradition that seeks to develop new ways by which to perceive and think about natural phenomena–ways that were influenced by both the transformations within philosophy and the natural sciences. My second aim is to investigate the relevance of this non-reductive empiricism for contemporary environmental philosophy and ethics.

Research Interests

  • Kant and German idealism
  • The idea of nature and natural philosophy
  • Environmental philosophy and ethics
  • Aesthetics
  • Theories of Interpretation

Publications

Monographs

  • The Romantic Absolute: Being and Knowing in Early German Romantic Philosophy 1795-1804 (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming 2013).

Edited books:

  • Ed., The Relevance of Romanticism: Essays on German Romantic Philosophy (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2014).

Articles

  • “Pure versus Empirical Forms of Thought: Schelling’s Critique of Kant’s Categories and the Beginnings of Naturphilosophie,” Journal of the History of Philosophy (forthcoming 2013).
  • “‘Idealism is Nothing but Genuine Empiricism’: Novalis, Goethe and the Ideal of Romantic Science,” Goethe Yearbook 18:1 (2011): 67-95.
  • “From a Philosophy of Self to a Philosophy of Nature: Goethe and the Development of Schelling’s Naturphilosophie,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 92:3 (2010): 304-321.
    [Winner of the Goethe Society of North America’s Best Essay Prize for 2010]
  • “Interpreting Novalis’ Fichte-Studien,” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 84:3 (2010): 315-341.
  • “Reality through Illusion: Presenting the Absolute in Novalis,” Idealistic Studies 37:1 (2006): 27-45.
  • “Immediacy and Mediacy in Schleiermacher’s Reden,” Review of Metaphysics 59 (2006): 807-841
  • “Heroes and Fanatics: Discernment and Critique in Hegel’s Political Philosophy,” Idealistic Studies 34:2 (Summer 2004): 199-224.

Book Chapters

  • “Friedrich Schlegel,” in Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth Century German Philosophy, ed. Michael Forster and Kristin Gjesdal (Oxford: Oxford UP; forthcoming 2013).
  • “Intellectual Intuition and the Philosophy of Nature: An Examination of the Problem,” in Eckart Försters 25 Jahre der Philosophie (Frankfurt: Klostermann, forthcoming 2013).
  • “Spinoza in Schelling’s early Conception of Intellectual Intuition,” in Spinoza and German Idealism, ed. Yitzhak Melamed and Eckart Förster (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2012).
  • “The Absolute in German Romanticism and Idealism,” in The Edinburgh Critical History of Philosophy, volume 5: The Nineteenth Century, ed. Alison Stone (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2011).
  • “Schelling und die Frühromantik: Das Unendliche und das Endliche im Kunstwerk,“ in Das Problem der Endlichkeit in der Philosophie Schellings. Le problème de la finitude dans la philosophie de Schelling, ed. Mildred Galland- Szymkowiak (Zurich: Lit, 2011).

Book Reviews

  • Richard T. Gray, Nicholas Halmi, Gary J. Handwerk, Michael A. Rosenthal, Klaus A. Vieweg, eds., Invention of the Imagination: Romanticism and Beyond, in Notre Dame Philosophy Review (NDPR) (2012).
  • Jocelyn Holland. German Romanticism and Science. The Procreative Poetics of Goethe, Novalis and Ritter, in Goethe Yearbook 17 (2010): 389-392.
  • Nicholas Halbi. The Genealogy of the Romantic Symbol, in Modern Philology (2011).

Recent Presentations

  • “Sensibility and Organism: from the Critique of Judgment to the Metamorphosis of Plants,” Conference on Sensibility in Early Modern Philosophy, University of Sydney, August 28-29.
  • “Goethe and Environmental Philosophy,” University of Western Sydney-Bankstown, Wednesday August 15, 2-4pm.

    “Schelling’s Critique of the Kantian Categories,” presented at “Pure Forms of Thought in German Idealism,” The University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA, April 28-30, 2012.
  • “Intellectual intuition and the Philosophy of Nature: an Investigation of the Problem,” presented at “Die 25 Jahre der Philosophie,” Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany, June 28-30, 2012.

    “Romanticism and Environmental Philosophy,” International Association for Environmental Philosophy, Philadelphia, PA, October 23-24, 2011.

    “Philosophical Construction and Mechanism: Hegel’s Critique of Schelling,” presented at The Method of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, Department of Philosophy, Tung-Hai University, Taiwan, March 25-26, 2011.
  • “Spinoza in Schelling’s Early Conception of Intellectual Intuition,” presented at Spinoza and German Idealism, Department of Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University, May 13, 2010.
  • “Novalis, Goethe and the Ideal of Romantic Science,” presented at the Department of Germanics, The University of Pennsylvania, March 23, 2010.
  • “Schelling’s Appropriation of the Kantian Categories,” invited talk to be presented at “Pure Forms of Thought in German Idealism,” The University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA, April 28-30, 2012.
  • “Schelling in Die 25 Jahre der Philosophie,” invited talk to be presented at “Die 25 Jahre der Philosophie,” Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany, June 28-30, 2012.