Paul W. Franks

Paul Walter Franks is a scholar, writer and professor of philosophy. He graduated with his PhD from Harvard University in 1993, his dissertation supervisor was Stanley Cavell. Franks' dissertation, entitled "Kant and Hegel on the Esotericism of Philosophy", won the Emily and Charles Carrier Prize for a Dissertation in Moral Philosophy at Harvard University. He completed his B.A (First Class) and M.A, in philosophy, politics and economics at Balliol College, Oxford. Prior to this, Franks received his general education at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle, and studied classical rabbinic texts at Gateshead Talmudical College.^[1]

His primary areas of research and specialization are Jewish philosophy, Immanuel Kant, German idealism, metaphysics, epistemology, the foundations of human sciences, and post-Kantian approaches within Analytic philosophy and Continental philosophy. He has taught at Indiana University (Bloomington) between 1996 to 2000, University of Notre Dame from 2000 to 2004, the University of Chicago in 2003, and the University of Toronto from 2004 to 2011. Franks has been Faculty Fellow at the Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto; Brackenbury Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford; Lady Davis Graduate Research Fellow at the Hebrew University; Mrs. Giles F. Whiting Dissertation Fellow in the Humanities at Harvard University; Junior Fellow of the Michigan Society of Fellows; and Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies.^[2]

Franks was appointed as the inaugural holder of the Senator Jerahmiel S. and Carole S. Grafstein Chair in Jewish Philosophy at the University of Toronto in 2008. He was appointed in 2011 to a senior position at Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut.^[3] In December 2012, Franks gave a lecture entitled "From Indeterminacy to Idealism" at the opening of the Forschungskolleg Analytic German Idealism at the University of Leipzig.^[4]

Publications

Books

• All or Nothing: Skepticism, Transcendental Arguments and Systematicity in German Idealism Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2005 ISBN 0-674-01888-5
• Franz Rosenzweig: Theological and Philosophical Writings, translated, edited annotated and commented upon, with Michael L. Morgan, Hackett Publishing Company, 2000

Articles

• Inner Anti-Semitism or Kabbalistic Legacy: German Idealism's Relation to Judaism, in The International Yearbook of German Idealism, eds. Fred Rush and Jürgen Stolzenberg Walter de Gruyter 2010
• Jewish Philosophy after Kant: The Legacy of Salomon Maimon, in The Cambridge Companion to Modern Jewish Philosophy, eds. Michael L. Morgan and Peter Eli Gordon, Cambridge University Press 2007
• From Quine to Hegel: Naturalism, Anti-Realism, and Maimon's Question Quid Facti, in German Idealism: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Espen Hammer, Routledge 2007
• Serpentine Naturalism and Protean Nihilism: Transcendental Philosophy in Anthropological Post-Kantianism, German Idealism, and Neo-Kantianism, in The Oxford Handbook of Continental Philosophy, eds. Brian Leiter and Michael Rosen, Oxford University Press, 2007
• Everyday Speech and Revelatory Speech in Rosenzweig and Wittgenstein, in Philosophy Today special issue on Jewish philosophy 2006
• What should Kantians learn from Maimon’s skepticism?, in The Philosophy of Salomon Maimon and its Place in the Enlightenment, ed., Gideon Freudenthal, Amsterdam: Kluwer Press 2003
• From Kant to Post-Kantian Idealism, in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 76, 2002; All or Nothing: Systematicity and Nihilism in Jacobi, Reinhold, and Maimon, in The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism, ed. Karl Ameriks, Cambridge University Press, 2000
• Transcendental Arguments, Reason, and Skepticism: Contemporary Debates and the Origins of Post-Kantian Idealism, in Transcendental Arguments: Problems and Prospects, ed. Robert Stern, Mind Association Occasional Series, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000

References

External links

• @ Yale University. Faculty page.
• @ University of Toronto. Faculty Page with Biography, and Bibliography.
• @ Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. Book Review.
• @ Harvard University Press. Book abstract.