Please note: You are viewing the unstyled version of this web site. Either your browser does not support CSS (cascading style sheets) or it has been disabled.
Centre for Research on Social Inclusion
Local Navigation
Login
Intranet for Centre Staff & Members, coming soon...
Associate Professor Nicholas Smith
BA Newcastle (UK), MA York (UK), PhD Glas.
Director
| Email: | nsmith@scmp.mq.edu.au |
|---|---|
| Phone: | +61 (0)2 9850 8881 |
| Fax: | +61 (0)2 9850 8892 |
| Office: | W6A 735 |
Profile
Before moving to Macquarie in July 1997 Nick lived in London, where he spent three and a half years as Research Fellow and lecturer in Modern European Philosophy at Middlesex University. Prior to that Nick lived in Scotland, where he did his doctorate and taught philosophy at the Universities of Glasgow and Paisley. He is also a graduate of the Universities of Newcastle and York in England. He was born and raised in Liverpool, England.
Nick has long-standing research interests in political philosophy, social theory, and theories of subjectivity. His first book (Strong Hermeneutics, 1997) examined three ways of thinking about the contingency of human identity and its implications for ethics and political theory: 'weak thought' as exemplified by Rorty, Lyotard and postmodernism; what he called the 'strong hermeneutics' of Gadamer, Ricoeur and Taylor; and the discourse ethics of Jürgen Habermas. His second book (Charles Taylor, 2002) sought to provide a comprehensive, critical account of Taylor's work. It looked in some detail at the claims Taylor makes about the structure of the human sciences; the link between identity, language, and moral values; democracy and multiculturalism; and the conflict between secular and non-secular spirituality. Nick's work on Taylor dovetails with a broader research interest in philosophical diagnoses of the times. He has written on Levinas, Habermas, Rorty and others with a view to reaching some philosophical understanding of the pathologies and possibilities of the modern world.
Current Research Projects
Applying the ethics of recognition: work and the social bond
A/Prof Nicholas Smith; Dr Jean-Philippe Deranty – ARC Discovery
This ARC project in social philosophy proposes that societies can flourish only when all members of the community are recognised in their skills and identity. As a consequence, all sections of social life, not only political participation but also the family and the economy, rely on the fulfilment of specific demands of recognition. The project focuses on the relations of recognition that underpin the economic order, and in particular asks what relations need to be in place for work to be a positive experience. The project combines philosophical analysis of key notions with an examination of recent empirical studies to throw light on the changing world of work.
Grants Awarded
2006-2008. Australian Research Council Discovery Project, for ‘Applying the Ethics of Recognition: Work and the Social Bond’, Chief Investigator with Dr Jean Philippe Deranty, worth $213,000.
2005-2007. Queen’s University Belfast International Research Fellowship, for ‘Political Philosophy and Social Hope’, Chief Investigator with Prof. Shane O’Neill, worth £10,000.
2005-2009. Macquarie University Research Centre Scheme for ‘Centre for Research on Social Inclusion’, Director, worth $30,000 pa.
2003-2008. Macquarie University Millenium Fund Grant to establish the ‘Centre for Research on Social Inclusion’ in the Division of Society, Culture, Media and Philosophy, Director, worth $150,000 pa.
2005. RAACE Award for Self-Knowledge, Identity and Literary Imagination, Chief Supervisor, worth £18,000 per year over 3 years.
2004. RAACE Award for Applying the Ethics of Recognition, Chief Supervisor, worth £18,000 per year over 3 years.
2004. Macquarie University Research Development Grant, Visiting Scholar support for visit of Prof. Shane O’Neill in research program ‘Justice as social inclusion: the scope and limits of the discourse-theoretic conception of democratic politics’, worth $7,050.
Previous - Humanities Research Board of the British Academy Small Research Grant, for 'A Study of Charles Taylor'.
Publications
Books (single-authored)
2002. Charles Taylor: Meaning, Morals and Modernity. Cambridge: Polity.
2002. (ed.) Reading McDowell: On Mind and World. London and New York: Routledge.
1997. Strong Hermeneutics: Contingency and Moral Identity. London and New York: Routledge.
Books (co-authored)
2006. with R. Sinnerbrink, J. Deranty, P. Schmiedgen (eds.) Critique Today. Leiden and Boston: Brill.
2002. with A. Laitinen (eds.) Perspectives on the Philosophy of Charles Taylor. Helsinki: Acta Philosophica Fennica, Vol. 71.
Journal Articles
Forthcoming. 'Work and the Struggle for Recognition', European Journal of Political Theory.
Forthcoming. 'Levinas, Habermas and Modernity', Philosophy and Social Criticism.
2005. 'Hope and Critical Theory', Critical Horizons, 6(1), pp. 45-61.
2005. with R. Sinnerbrink and N. Smith. 'Critique Hope, Power: Challenges of Contemporary Critical Theory', Critical Horizons, 6, pp. 1-21.
2005. 'Rorty on Religion and Hope', Inquiry, 48(1), pp. 76-98.
2000. 'Levinas, Subjectivity and the Sacred', Synthesis Philosophica, Vol. 29-30, No. 1-2, pp. 129-43.
2000. 'Levinas's Modern Sacred', Law Text, Culture, 5(1), pp. 145-60.
1996. 'Contingency and Self-Identity: Taylor's Hermeneutics vs. Rorty's Postmodernism', Theory, Culture and Society, 13(2), pp. 105-20.
Book Chapters
Forthcoming. 'Recognition, Culture and Economy: Honneth's Debate with Fraser', in D. Petherbridge (ed.) The Philosophy of Axel Honneth. Leiden and Boston: Brill.
2006. 'Hope and Critical Theory', in R. Sinnerbrink, J. Deranty, P. Schmiedgen & N. H. Smith (eds.) Critique Today. Leiden and Boston: Brill.
2006. with R. Sinnerbrink and J. Deranty. 'Critique, Hope, Power: Challenges of Contemporary Critical Theory', in Sinnerbrink et al. (eds.) Critique Today. Leiden and Boston: Brill.
2005. 'Is Monotheism Compatible with Pluralism? Reflections on Richard Rorty’s Critique of Religion', in A. Plaw (ed.). Frontiers of Diversity: Essays in Contemporary Pluralism. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
2004. 'Taylor in the Hermeneutic Tradition', in R. Abbey (ed.) Charles Taylor (Contemporary Philosophy in Focus). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2002. 'Overcoming Representationalism', in A. Laitinen and N. H. Smith (eds.) Perspectives on the Philosophy of Charles Taylor. Helsinki: Acta Philosophica Fennica.
2002. 'Introduction', in N. H. Smith (ed.) Reading McDowell: On Mind and World. London and New York: Routledge.
2002. 'Hans-Georg Gadamer', in J. Simons (ed.) From Kant to Levi-Strauss: the Background to Contemporary Critical Theory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
2002. with A. Laitinen. 'Introduction', in A. Laitinen and N. H. Smith (eds.) Perspectives on the Philosophy of Charles Taylor. Helsinki: Acta Philosophica Fennica.
2001. with T. McCarthy and S. O’Neill. 'Critical Theory Today: An Interview with Thomas McCarthy', in W. Rehg and J. Bohman (eds.) Pluralism and the Pragmatic Turn: The Transformation of Critical Theory. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
1999. 'Philosophy, Contingency and Social Criticism', in I. Mackenzie and S. O’Neill (eds.) Reconstituting Social Criticism: Political Morality in an Age of Skepticism. London: Macmillan.
Dictionary / Encyclopaedia Entries
Entries on ‘Hermeneutics’, ‘Gadamer’, ‘Herder’, ‘Schleiermacher’, ‘Ricoeur’, ‘Taylor’ and ‘MacIntyre’ in John Protevi ed., Edinburgh Dictionary of Continental Philosophy Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2005. (Also published as A Dictionary of Continental Philosophy, New Haven,Yale University Press, 2006).
Entry on ‘Charles Taylor’, in Stuart Brown ed., Dictionary of Twentieth Century British Philosophers, Bristol, Thoemmes Continuum, 2005, pp. 1027-1033.
Entry on ‘John McDowell’, in Thomas Mautner ed., The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 2005.
Selected Presentations
2006, Feb. 'Work and Instrumental Action – 25 Years on’, Conference on ‘Recognition: Ethics, Politics, Philosophy’, Queens’s University Belfast.
2005, Oct. 'The Significance of Embodiment', Workshop with Prof. Robert Brandom, University of Sydney.
2005, Oct. 'Reply to Nancy Fraser', Workshop with Prof. Nancy Fraser, University of Sydney.
2005, July. 'Recognition, Redistribution and Economic Relations', Society for Applied European Philosophy Conference, Slovakia.
2005, June. 'Ungroundable Hope', Utopian Studies Conference, New Lanark.
2005, June. 'Recognition and Class', Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy Conference, UNSW.
2004, May. with J. Deranty, M. Fine and A. Wise (eds.) Mobile Boundaries/Rigid Worlds: Proceedings of the 2nd Annual Conference of CRSI, Centre for Research on Social Inclusion, Macquarie University.
2004, Dec. 'The Crisis of Hope', Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy Conference, Macquarie University.
2004, June. 'Culture and the Economy: lessons from Aristotle', Conference on ‘Recognition’, University of Jyvaskyla, Finland.
2004, May. 'Historical Hope', Philosophy and Social Science Conference, Prague.
2004, May. 'Culture and the Economy', University of Glasgow [and Queen’s University Belfast].
2004, May. 'Rorty on Hope and Religion', University of Liverpool.
2003, with M. Fine and P. Henman(eds.) Social Inequality Today: Proceedings of the 1st Annual Conference of CRSI, Centre for Research on Social Inclusion, Macquarie University.