Benjamin Brewer

PhD Candidate

(Email)
Dissertation: Memory Remains: Community after Technology in Heidegger and Benjamin

Committee: Andrew Mitchell (chair), Elissa Marder, John Lysaker, Axelle Karera, and Kristina Mendicino (Brown University)

Education

M.A., Philosophy, University of Oregon, 2015
B.A., summa cum laude, Philosophy and English Literature, Pacific University, 2013

Research Interests

19th and 20th century continental philosophy (esp. phenomenology, critical theory, and deconstruction), social-political philosophy, aesthetics (esp. literature), philosophy of memory, history of philosophy, classical Islamic philosophy, deconstruction, William Faulkner

Selected Awards and Grants

  • Best Graduate Student Essay, Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy, for “Paraontology: Oskar Becker’s Philosophy of Race and the Ironies of Ahistorical Phenomenology”
  • Freie Universität Berlin Exchange Grant, 2018-19

Selected Publications

  • “The Secret Law of Selfhood: Reading Heidegger’s Ipseity after Derrida’s Hospitality.” Co-authored with Ronald Mendoza de Jesús. Oxford Literary Review 43, no. 2 (2021): 268-90. In press.
  • “‘Victory is an Illusion of Philosophers and Fools’: Heidegger, Faulkner, and the Ruination of the Proper.” Heidegger and the Literary World. Edited by Florian Grosser and Nassima Sahraoui, 141-55. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021. In press
  • “‘The Unity that is Indivisibly Present in Each Thing’: Reason, Activity, and Construction in Schelling’s Identity Philosophy.” Kabiri: The Official Journal of the North American Schelling Society 2 (2021): 28-38.
  • “Good Enough Justice? Stanley Cavell and Walter Benjamin on the Moral Demands of Justice.” Philosophy Today 64, no. 3 (2020): 745-61.
  • Review of Jacques Derrida, Geschlecht III: Sex, Race, Nation, Humanity, trans. Rodrigo Therezo and Katie Chenowith, eds. Rodrigo Therezo, Katie Chenoweth, and Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2020). Philosophy Today 64, no. 2 (2020): 467-75.

Selected Presentations

  • Essential Others, Aberrant Others: Heidegger, Nationalism, and the Logic of Essence.” The Fifty-Ninth Meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP 59). September 24, 2021.
  • Aus dem Abgrunde aufgetaucht: Baudelaire, Schelling.” American Comparative Literature Association. April 9, 2021. Virtual Conference.
  • “Benjamin, Baudelaire, and the Irony of Reading.” Benjamin’s Baudelaire: Constellations of Modernity. May 10th, 2019. London, England.
  • “Photographic Remembrance: Image and Memory in Lessing and Benjamin,” invited lecture as part of the seminar Time and Image: Benjamin and the Reading of History with Ronald Mendoza de Jesús. March 2019. Università degli Studi di Salerno, Italy.
  • “The Power of a Proper Self: Derrida’s Unpublished Remarks on the Beiträge,” With Ronald Mendoza-de Jesús. The Fifty-Second Meeting of the Heidegger Circle. May 4th, 2018. Baltimore, Maryland.
  • “The Thin Veil: Reason, Revelation, and Esoteric Translation in Ibn Tufayl.” The Fourth Annual Meeting of the History of Philosophy Society. April 13th, 2018. San Antonio, Texas.

Teaching Experience

Courses Taught:

  • Philosophy and Film: Truth and Testimony, Emory University, Summer 2021.
  • Basic Problems: Telling the Truth, Emory University, Spring 2020.
  • Philosophy of Religion: Revelation and Reason, Emory University, Spring 2018
  • Introduction to Ethics: the Good and the Just, Emory University, Fall 2017
  • Renaissance and Modern Philosophy, co-taught with Professor Huseyinzadegan, Emory University, Spring 2017

Teaching Assistantships:

  • Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, Emory University, Fall 2016
  • Medieval and Renaissance Studies, University of Oregon, Winter 2015
  • Classics, University of Oregon, Fall 2014
  • First Year Seminar: Biopolitics, Pacific University, Fall 2013
  • First Year Seminar: Ethics in Society, Pacific University, Fall 2010