Babette E. Babich (born 14 November 1956, in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

) is an

American philosopher This is a list of American philosophers; of philosophers who are either from, or spent many productive years of their lives in the United States. {, border="0" style="margin:auto;" class="toccolours" , - ! {{MediaWiki:Toc , - , style="text-al ...

who writes from a continental perspective on

aesthetics Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed thr ...

philosophy of science Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultim ...

and

technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...

in addition to critical and cultural theory.

Career

Including research work at the

Université Catholique de Louvain The Université catholique de Louvain (also known as the Catholic University of Louvain, the English translation of its French name, and the University of Louvain, its official English name) is Belgium's largest French-speaking university. It ...

(

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...

Université François-Rabelais The University of Tours (french: Université de Tours), formerly François Rabelais University of Tours (french: Université François Rabelais), is a public university in Tours, France. Founded in 1969, the university was formerly named after th ...

Tours Tours ( , ) is one of the largest cities in the region of Centre-Val de Loire, France. It is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Indre-et-Loire. The Communes of France, commune of Tours had 136,463 ...

(

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

Freie Universität Berlin The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public research university in Berlin, Germany. It is consistently ranked among Germany's best universities, with particular strengths in political science and t ...

and Universität Tübingen (

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

) Babich has a doctoral degree from

Boston College Boston College (BC) is a private Jesuit research university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Founded in 1863, the university has more than 9,300 full-time undergraduates and nearly 5,000 graduate students. Although Boston College is classifie ...

. She taught at

Denison University Denison University is a private liberal arts college in Granville, Ohio. One of the earliest colleges established in the former Northwest Territory, Denison University was founded in 1831. The college was first called the Granville Literary and ...

and

Marquette University Marquette University () is a Private university, private Society of Jesus, Jesuit research university in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Established by the Society of Jesus as Marquette College on August 28, 1881, it was founded by John Henni, John Martin ...

before her current position at

Fordham University Fordham University () is a Private university, private Jesuit universities, Jesuit research university in New York City. Established in 1841 and named after the Fordham, Bronx, Fordham neighborhood of the The Bronx, Bronx in which its origina ...

in addition to an honorary appointment as Visiting Professor of Theology, Religion and Philosophy,

University of Winchester , mottoeng = Wisdom and Knowledge , established = 1840 - Winchester Diocesan Training School1847 - Winchester Training College1928 - King Alfred's College2005 - University of Winchester , type = Public research university ...

, England. She has also taught, as visiting professor, most recently, at the Humboldt University, Berlin as well as at the Universität Tübingen, The University at Stony Brook (both

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

and

Long Island Long Island is a densely populated island in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, part of the New York metropolitan area. With over 8 million people, Long Island is the most populous island in the United Sta ...

Campuses),

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private research university in the Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789 as Georg ...

, the

School of Visual Arts The School of Visual Arts New York City (SVA NYC) is a private for-profit art school in New York City. It was founded in 1947 and is a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design. History This school was started by ...

in Chelsea (NYC),

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...

, and the

Juilliard School The Juilliard School ( ) is a private performing arts conservatory in New York City. Established in 1905, the school trains about 850 undergraduate and graduate students in dance, drama, and music. It is widely regarded as one of the most el ...

Work

Babich writes on

philosophy of technology The philosophy of technology is a sub-field of philosophy that studies the nature of technology and its social effects. Philosophical discussion of questions relating to technology (or its Greek ancestor ''techne'') dates back to the very dawn of ...

and

as well as

philosophy of art Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed th ...

, including

philosophy of music Philosophy of music is the study of "fundamental questions about the nature of music and our experience of it".Andrew Kania,The Philosophy of Music, ''The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'', Spring 2014 edition, edited by Edward N. Zalta. The ph ...

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...

culture Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Tyl ...

and

poetics Poetics is the theory of structure, form, and discourse within literature, and, in particular, within poetry. History The term ''poetics'' derives from the Ancient Greek ποιητικός ''poietikos'' "pertaining to poetry"; also "creative" an ...

film A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

, and

digital media Digital media is any communication media that operate in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. Digital media can be created, viewed, distributed, modified, listened to, and preserved on a digital electronics device. ' ...

, as well as life-size bronzes in antiquity (

Greek sculpture The sculpture of ancient Greece is the main surviving type of fine ancient Greek art as, with the exception of painted ancient Greek pottery, almost no ancient Greek painting survives. Modern scholarship identifies three major stages in monumen ...

), and the stylistic difference between analytic and

continental philosophy Continental philosophy is a term used to describe some philosophers and philosophical traditions that do not fall under the umbrella of analytic philosophy. However, there is no academic consensus on the definition of continental philosophy. Pri ...

. Over the years, Babich has contributed to contemporary debates in

as well as the

history of science The history of science covers the development of science from ancient times to the present. It encompasses all three major branches of science: natural, social, and formal. Science's earliest roots can be traced to Ancient Egypt and Meso ...

and

sociology of philosophy Sociology of philosophy or philosophical sociology is an academic discipline of both sociology and philosophy that seeks to understand the influence of philosophical thought upon society alongside societal influence upon philosophy. It seeks to ...

and has written on

ecology Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...

, especially aether (she is part of Aaron Michael Smith and Jordan Kokot's multimedia art project, ''field, guide'') and animal philosophy. She specializes in the writings of

Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, Prose poetry, prose poet, cultural critic, Philology, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philo ...

Heidegger Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th centur ...

, and Hölderlin and she engages the work of

Theodor Adorno Theodor is a masculine given name. It is a German form of Theodore. It is also a variant of Teodor. List of people with the given name Theodor * Theodor Adorno, (1903–1969), German philosopher * Theodor Aman, Romanian painter * Theodor Blueger, ...

Giorgio Agamben Giorgio Agamben ( , ; born 22 April 1942) is an Italian philosopher best known for his work investigating the concepts of the state of exception, form-of-life (borrowed from Ludwig Wittgenstein) and '' homo sacer''. The concept of biopolitics ( ...

Günther Anders Günther Anders (born Günther Siegmund Stern, 12 July 1902 – 17 December 1992) was a German-Austrian Jewish émigré, philosopher, essayist and journalist. Trained in the phenomenological tradition, he developed a philosophical anthropolo ...

Paul Feyerabend Paul Karl Feyerabend (; January 13, 1924 – February 11, 1994) was an Austrian-born philosopher of science best known for his work as a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked for three decades (1958 ...

Bruno Latour Bruno Latour (; 22 June 1947 – 9 October 2022) was a French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist.Wheeler, Will. ''Bruno Latour: Documenting Human and Nonhuman Associations'' Critical Theory for Library and Information Science. Libraries ...

Georges Bataille Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille (; ; 10 September 1897 – 9 July 1962) was a French philosopher and intellectual working in philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels, ...

Jean Baudrillard Jean Baudrillard ( , , ; 27 July 1929 – 6 March 2007) was a French sociologist, philosopher and poet with interest in cultural studies. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as w ...

Ludwik Fleck Ludwik Fleck (11 July 1896 – 5 June 1961) was a Polish Jewish and Israeli physician and biologist who did important work in epidemic typhus in Lwów, Poland, with Rudolf WeiglT. Tansey (2014) ''Typhus and tyranny'', ''Nature'' 511(7509), 291 ...

Ivan Illich Ivan Dominic Illich ( , ; 4 September 1926 – 2 December 2002) was an Austrian Roman Catholic priest, theologian, philosopher, and social critic. His 1971 book '' Deschooling Society'' criticises modern society's institutional approach to edu ...

Paul Virilio Paul Virilio (; 4 January 1932 – 10 September 2018) was a French cultural theorist, urbanist, architect and aesthetic philosopher. He is best known for his writings about technology as it has developed in relation to speed and power, with divers ...

Peter Sloterdijk Peter Sloterdijk (; ; born 26 June 1947) is a German philosopher and cultural theorist. He is a professor of philosophy and media theory at the University of Art and Design Karlsruhe. He co-hosted the German television show ''Im Glashaus: Das P ...

, and

Slavoj Žižek Slavoj Žižek (, ; ; born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian philosopher, cultural theorist and public intellectual. He is international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, visiting professor at New Y ...

. Babich is the author of a range of studies foregrounding the role of

politics Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...

in institutional philosophy, particularly the analytic-continental divide but also on the question of gender and agism. A student of

Hans-Georg Gadamer Hans-Georg Gadamer (; ; February 11, 1900 – March 13, 2002) was a German philosopher of the continental tradition, best known for his 1960 ''magnum opus'', '' Truth and Method'' (''Wahrheit und Methode''), on hermeneutics. Life Family ...

and

Jacques Taminiaux Jacques Taminiaux (; 29 May 1928 – 7 May 2019) was a Belgian philosopher and professor at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, United States. Biography Born in Seneffe, Taminiaux studied law and philosophy at the Catholic Univers ...

, she also worked with

Jacob Taubes Jacob Taubes (25 February 1923 – 21 March 1987) was a sociologist of religion, philosopher, and scholar of Judaism. Taubes was born into an old rabbinical family. He was married to the writer Susan Taubes. He obtained his doctorate in 1947 for ...

and

among others. In 1995, she founded the journal ''New Nietzsche Studies'', echoing the title of the 1974 book, ''The New Nietzsche,'' the continentally minded collection edited by David Blair Allison (1944-2016).

Bibliography

Books

*
Günther Anders’ Philosophy of Technology: From Phenomenology to Critical Theory
'' London: Bloomsbury, 2022. *
Nietzsches Plastik. Ästhetische Phänomenologie im Spiegel des Lebens
'' London/Berlin: Peter Lang, 2021. *
Nietzsches Antike. Beiträge zur Altphilologie und Musik
'' Berlin: Academia, 2020. *
The Hallelujah Effect. Philosophical Reflections on Music, Performance Practice and Technology
'' Routledge: 2016. 013*
Un politique brisé. Le souci d'autrui, l'humanisme, et les juifs chez Heidegger
'' Paris: L'Harmattan, 2016. *
La fin de la pensée? Philosophie analytique contre philosophie continentale
'' Paris: L'Harmattan, 2012. *
Nietzsches Wissenschaftsphilosophie. »Die Wissenschaft unter der Optik des Künstlers zu sehn, die Kunst aber unter der des Lebens«.
' Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010. *
"Eines Gottes Glück voller Macht und Liebe." Beiträge zu Nietzsche, Hölderlin, Heidegger.
' Weimar: Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, 2009. *
Words in Blood, Like Flowers: Philosophy and Poetry, Music and Eros in Hölderlin, Nietzsche, and Heidegger.
' Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006, paper: 2007. *
Nietzsche e la Scienza: Arte, vita, conoscenza.
' Translated by Fulvia Vimercati. Raffaello Cortina Editore. Milan. 1996. *
Nietzsche's Philosophy of Science: Reflecting Science on the Ground of Art and Life.
' State University of New York Press. Albany. 1994.

Edited collections

*
Reading David Hume's 'Of the Standard of Taste
'' Berlin: de Gruyter, 2019. *
Hermeneutic Philosophies of Social Science
'' Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017. * ''New Nietzsche Studies.'' he Journal of the Nietzsche Society.1996 - ongoing. * ''The Multidimensionality of Hermeneutic Phenomenology.'' Frankfurt am Main: Springer, 2013. ith Dimitri Ginev* ''Heidegger und Nietzsche.'' Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2012. ith Holger Zaborowski and Alfred Denker* ''Nietzsche, Habermas, and Critical Theory.'' Amherst, New York. Prometheus Books Humanity Books Imprint. 2004. * ''Hermeneutic Philosophy of Science, Van Gogh's Eyes, and God: Essays in Honor of Patrick A. Heelan. S.J.'' oston Studies in the Philosophy of Science.Dordrecht. Kluwer. 2002. * ''Nietzsche, Theories of Knowledge and Critical Theory: Nietzsche and the Sciences I'' oston Studies in the Philosophy of Science.Dordrecht. Kluwer. 1999. * ''Nietzsche, Epistemology and Philosophy of Science: Nietzsche and the Sciences II'' oston Studies in the Philosophy of Science.Dordrecht. Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1999. * ''From Phenomenology to Thought, Errancy, and Desire: Essays in Honor of William J. Richardson, S.J.'' hænomenologicaKluwer Academic Publishers. Dordrecht. 1995.

References

External links

Babette Babich: Fordham University Faculty Web Page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Babich 1956 births 20th-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century American philosophers 20th-century essayists 21st-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American philosophers 21st-century essayists American political philosophers American social commentators American sociologists American women sociologists American women essayists American women philosophers American women writers Boston College alumni Continental philosophers Critical theorists Cultural critics Environmental philosophers Environmental writers Epistemologists Heidegger scholars Historians of philosophy Historians of science Living people Metaphysicians Ontologists Phenomenologists Philosophers of art Philosophers of culture Philosophers of education Philosophers of history Philosophers of literature Philosophers of religion Philosophers of science Philosophers of technology Philosophy academics Philosophy writers Social critics Social philosophers 21st-century American women writers