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Profile

Colin W. Koopman (Assistant Professor)

Office: PLC 333
Office Hours: by appointment
Phone: 541-346-5980
Email: koopman@uoregon.edu
Website: http://www.uoregon.edu/~koopman/

I work primarily in American Philosophy (esp. pragmatism) and Continental Philosophy (esp. genealogy) with an eye toward contributions to current issues in Political Philosophy and Ethics.  My approach is informed by a strong respect for the history of philosophy (esp. the history of modern thought).  My approach expresses a philosophical and intellectual pluralism in which I draw on diverse figures, traditions, disciplines, and themes.  I work on figures in the pragmatist (James, Dewey, and Rorty), continental (Foucault, Deleuze, and Nietzsche), and analytic (Bernard Williams, Stanley Cavell) traditions.

Current Research

I am currently working on two major research projects.

  • The first of these research projects focuses on liberal democratic theory and the distinction therein between publicity and privacy.  The beginning phase of this project will involve an inquiry into the ways in which internet sociotechnologies are affecting the conditions of possibility for politics, ethics, and culture in the present.  (For a preview of this work please read "A Philosopher Ponders the Virtual Public Sphere" in UO's CASCade magazine.)  The particular focus of this research is on practices and conceptions of publicity and privacy.  I use genealogy to historically problematize the public/private distinction as it is modulated by internet sociotechnologies and I use pragmatism to develop a future-oriented pluralistic response to this problematization.  Hence: what are the thoughts to publicness and privacy in the present and how can publicness, privacy, and their relation be remediated so that we do not lose these values altogether?
  • A second project involves a series of articles (or possibly a book) on what I am calling "cultural critical philosophy", with a focus on the changing conception of philosophy exhibited in pragmatism, genealogy, and other traditions and figures in the history of philosophy (including Hume).  A central part of this project involves a patient elaboration of a conception of cultural critical philosophy as helpfully explicating the drift of a wide number of contemporary trends in our discipline.

Books

  • My first book Pragmatism as Transition was published by Columbia University Press in the Fall of 2009.
  • My second book manuscript Genealogy as Critique is currently under contract with Indiana University Press, and scheduled for publication next calendar year.

Articles

I have published numerous articles in the areas of Political Philosophy and Ethics as well as on Pragmatism and Genealogy.  These papers appear in Philosophy & Social Criticism, Metaphilosophy, The Review of Metaphysics, The Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Contemporary Pragmatism, Foucault Studies, and elsewhere.  I continue to develop articles in these areas.  In addition, I am currently involved in three editorial projects: a special issue on interdisciplinary uses of Foucault (forthcoming in History of the Human Sciences), another issue on Foucault and Pragmatism (forthcoming in Foucault Studies), and a co-edited volume on Rorty and cultural critical philosophy.

Website

For a complete list of publications as well as information on current and past courses please visit my website at http://www.uoregon.edu/~koopman/.