Timothy Rosenkoetter
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Kant is the focus of my historical research, one strand of which is a project that uses Kant’s theoretical philosophy and logic to develop a new approach to the foundations of his moral philosophy. Its central idea is that the latter, just as much as the former, is an investigation of our ability to cognize objects, albeit objects of a different kind, goods or ‘ought-to-bes’. Another strand of my historical research focuses on ways in which Kant understands his work as assimilating, and thereby improving, Christian Wolff’s now neglected philosophical project. I also have broad interests in ethics, metaethics, and axiology. A recent topic of attention has been the contrasting claims about value, its formal properties, and the bearers of value that are integral to the consequentialist and Kantian traditions. My teaching has been concentrated in ethics, the 19th century, logic -- and, of course, Kant. I am returning to Dartmouth after having served as a visiting professor at NYU, Johns Hopkins, and Sewanee: The University of the South.
Contact
Department(s)
Physiology, Philosophy
Education
- B.A. Harvard College
- M.A. University of Pittsburgh
- Ph.D. University of Chicago
Selected Publications
“Truth criteria and the very project of a transcendental logic”, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 91:2 (2009) 1-49.
“Are Kantian analytic judgments about objects?”, Recht und Frieden in der Philosophie Kants , V Rohden (ed.), V (2008) 191-202.
“Kant on apperception and the unity of judgment”, Inquiry 49 (2006) 469-489.
Works In Progress
The large project that I am working on uses Kant’s theoretical philosophy and logic to develop a new approach to the foundations of his moral philosophy. Its central idea is that the latter, just as much as the former, is an investigation of our ability to cognize objects, albeit objects of a different kind (things that ought to be instead of things that are). This project will result in a book. I am also working on a number of smaller projects, including the correct understanding of Kant’s distinction between concepts and intuitions, the proper interpretation of his table of the forms of judgment, and a defensible contemporary Kantian position on the morality or immorality of suicide.