Hent de Vries
Professor, Russ Family Chair in the Humanities (Director Humanities Center)
(secondary appointment: Department of Philosophy)
Modern European thought, history and critique of metaphysics, philosophies of religion, political theologies, concepts of violence, literature and temporality
The Humanities Center
Gilman 226
Johns Hopkins University
3400 North Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21218
Phone: 410-516-0474
Fax: 410-516-7354
Email: hentdevries@jhu.edu
Academic Positions:
Hent de Vries is Director of the Humanities Center.
Since January 2003, he has held a joint appointment as Professor in the Humanities Center and the Department of Philosophy at the Johns Hopkins University. Since October 2007, he holds the Russ Family Chair in the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.
Before joining the faculty at Johns Hopkins, he held the Chair of Metaphysics and Its History in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam (1993-2002), where he remains a Regular Visiting Professor of Systematic Philosophy and the Philosophy of Religion. He was a co-founder of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA), an interdisciplinary research institute with a graduate program, and served as the Director of its governing board (1994-98) and its Scientific Director (1998-2004).
He received his PhD in Philosophy of Religion from the University of Leiden in 1989. His previous teaching and research positions include: Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of German at Johns Hopkins; Associate Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University of Chicago; Visiting Professor at the Departments of German and the Humanities Center at Johns Hopkins; Senior Visiting Scholar at the Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion at the University of Chicago; Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions and Visiting Scholar at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University; Visiting Scholar at The Heyman Center for the Humanities, Columbia University.
In June and July 2012, Hent de Vries will be on the faculty of the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University and offer a six-week seminar on "Miracles, Events, Effects." From September 2012 through January 2013, he will be a Visiting Professor in the Council of the Humanities and a Stewart Fellow in the Department of German at Princeton University.
At Johns Hopkins, Hent de Vries is an affiliated faculty member of The Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Jewish Studies Program in the School of Arts and Sciences. He is also a member of the board of directors of the Zanvyl Krieger School's Program for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality (WGS), as well as a member of the Steering Committee of the Center for Advanced Media Studies.
Since February 2012, he is an invited member of a two-year long seminar, comprised of participants drawn from universities, think tanks, government agencies and media, and sponsored by the newly launched Global Politics and Religion Initiative (GPRI) to promote the study of religion and international affairs at the Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
Since May 2007, Hent de Vries has been Directeur de Programme at the Collège International de Philosophie, in Paris.
A recent interview with him was published in the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory (JCRT).
Teaching:
His teaching focuses on modern European thought, but reflects other interests as well. He offers undergraduate courses and graduate seminars on the history and critique of metaphysics, philosophies of religion, political theologies, concepts of violence, the tradition of spiritual exercises and of moral perfectionism, literature and temporality.
Public Service Positions:
Hent de Vries was Chair of The Future of the Religious Past, an interdisciplinary program sponsored by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), which disbursed 5.4 million Euros in support of advanced research and international conferences at Dutch universities from 2002 to 2012. In this capacity, he also served as General Editor of five volumes of proceedings resulting from the program.
From January 2006 until October 2009, he served as an advisor to the Netherlands Scientific Council of Government Policy (WRR) in The Hague, and as a member of its project group on Religion and the Public Domain.
In 2006, Hent de Vries was a member of the working group "Values, Beliefs and Ideologies as Forces behind the Changing Europe," sponsored by the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA), a partnership between fifteen Humanities Research Councils across Europe and the European Science Foundation. In 2007, he was a member of the Management Committee of the European Science Foundation's Forward Look Program on Religion and Belief Systems.
Since November 2010, he is Chair of the Council of the Human Sciences at the Fetzer Institute in Kalamazoo, Michigan. This international council, consisting of some fifteen members, is sponsored as part of Fetzer's three-year long project to “foster awareness of the power of love and forgiveness in the emerging global community.” It will disburse an annual sum of $ 550.000 to prepare a global meeting to be held in Assisi in 2012 as well as follow-up projects.
Publications:
His principal publications include: Philosophy and the Turn to Religion (Johns Hopkins UP, 1999, 2000), Religion and Violence: Philosophical Perspectives from Kant to Derrida (Johns Hopkins UP, 2002, 2006), and Minimal Theologies: Critiques of Secular Reason in Theodor W. Adorno and Emmanuel Levinas (Johns Hopkins UP, 2005).
He is the co-editor, with Samuel Weber, of Violence, Identity, and Self-Determination (Stanford UP, 1997) and of Religion and Media (Stanford UP, 2002). He is also the co-editor, with Lawrence E. Sullivan, of Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World (Fordham UP 2006), the editor of Religion: Beyond a Concept (Fordham UP 2007), and the co-editor, with Willemien Otten and Arjo Vanderjagt, of How the West was Won: Essays on Literary Imagination, the Canon and the Christian Middle Ages (Brill 2010). He is also the co-editor, with Ward Blanton, of Paul and the Philosophers (Fordham University Press, 2012).
Currently, he is completing several book-length studies, entitled Of Miracles, Events, and Special Effects (The Politics of Global Religion in an Age of New Media, Vol. 1); Miracle Workers of the Eleventh Hour (The Politics of Global Religion in an Age of New Media, Vol. 2); and Out of the Ordinary: Moral Perfectionism, Religion, and the Case for Deep Pragmatism (The Politics of Global Religion in an Age of New Media, Vol. 3). A further study, entitled Instances: Spiritual Exercises in the Literatures of Time, is in preparation.
Hent de Vries is the editor of the book series Cultural Memory in the Present, published by Stanford University Press.
Curriculum Vitae
Published Books
Published Articles
Must We (Not) Mean What We Say? Seriousness and Sincerity in the Work of J.L. Austin and Stanley Cavell
The Deep Conditions of Secularity
Philosophia Ancilla Theologiae: Allegory and Ascension in Philo's On Mating With the Priliminary Studies (De Congressu Quarendae eruditionis Gratia)
Fast Forward, or: The Theologico-Political Event In Quick Motion (Miracles, Media, and Multitudes in St. Augustine)
Social Science Research Council Blog on Charles Taylor's "A Secular Age"
The Shibboleth Effect: On Reading Paul Celan
Winke: Divine Topoi in Nancy, Hölderlin, Heidegger
From Ghost in the Machine to Spiritual Automaton: Philosophical Meditation in Wittgenstein, Cavell, and Levinas
On General and Divine Economy: Talal Asad's Genealogy of the Secular & Emmanuel Levinas's Critique of Capitalism, Colonialism, and Money
In der Gewalt des theologisch-politischen Dilemmas
Instances: Temporal Modes From Augustine to Derrida and Lyotard
Les deux sources de la machine théologique: Une note sur Derrida et Bergson
Of Miracles and Special Effects
Die Bezeugung des Anderen. Von Temps et récit zu Soi-même comme un autre
Lapsus absolu: Some Remarks on Maurice Blanchot's l'Instant de ma mort
On Obligation: Lyotard and Levinas
Orientalism
Horror Religiosus: Response to Nicholas Wolterstorff, Joseph Margolis, and Casey Haskins
Zum Begriff der Allegorie in Schopenhauers Religionsphilosophie
De terugkeer van religie en de taak van de filosofie
De Universiteit als kosmopolis: Martha Nussbaums' "Cultivating Humanity"
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