Brian Schroeder

Dept mailing address:
Department of Philosophy
College of Liberal Arts
Rochester Institute of
Technology
92 Lomb Memorial Drive
Rochester NY 14623-5604

Dept email:
philosophy@rit.edu

Webmaster:
dbsgsh@rit.edu

Department of Philosophy

Brian Schroeder

Professor & Chair of the Department

Office: Phone: Fax: Email:	3110, College of Liberal Arts 585-475-6346 585-475-7120 brian.schroeder@rit.edu
Mail:	Department of Philosophy Rochester Institute of Technology 92 Lomb Memorial Drive Rochester, NY 14623-5604

Brian Schroeder is Professor of Philosophy, Chair of the Department of Philosophy, and Director of Religious Studies at R.I.T., where he has taught since 2001. He is the Executive Co-Director of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy, Vice President of the Society for the Philosophy of Creativity (Eastern Division), and General Co-Editor of the SUNY Series in Contemporary Italian Philosophy. After earning the M.Div. with distinction from Princeton Theological Seminary, he received the M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy from Stony Brook University. His areas of research and teaching interest encompass post-Kantian European philosophy, philosophy of religion, environmental philosophy, the history of philosophy, East Asian and comparative philosophy, social and political philosophy, and philosophical theology. His past research fellowships and grants include a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship for study in Italy.

The author of Altared Ground: Levinas, History, and Violence (Routledge, 1996) and Pensare ambientalista. Tra filosofia e ecologia [Environmental Thinking: Between Philosophy and Ecology] with Silvia Benso, trans. (Paravia Scriptorium, 2000), Schroeder has published articles engaging the thought of Plato, Plotinus, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari, Nancy, Lacoue-Labarthe, Altizer, Casey, Lingis, Vattimo, Virilio, Dogen, Nishitani, Tanabe, Fielding, Leopold, Naess, Bookshin, and especially Levinas. His publications also include Thinking Through the Death of God: A Critical Companion to Thomas J. J. Altizer, ed. with Lissa McCullough (SUNY Press, 2004), Contemporary Italian Philosophy: Crossing the Borders of Ethics, Politics, and Religion, ed. and trans. with Silvia Benso (SUNY, 2007), Levinas and the Ancients, ed. with Silvia Benso (Indiana University Press, forthcoming 2008), Between Nihilism and Politics: The Hermeneutics of Gianni Vattimo, ed. with Silvia Benso (SUNY, forthcoming), and Carlo Sini, The Ethics of Writing, trans. with Silvia Benso (SUNY, forthcoming).

His current writing projects include two books. The first, Atonement of the Last God: On Grounding Philosophical Religion, continues and departs from the thinking started in Altared Ground. Conjoining late modern and contemporary European philosophy, the Japanese Kyoto School of comparative religious philosophy, and kenotic and reconstructive theologies, this work focuses on the question of establishing a post-metaphysical ground, and its subsequent impact on determining the intersection of religion, ethics, and politics. The second book, Terranscendence: Bringing Ground Back to Earth, begins with a critical overview of various ecological standpoints (the land ethic, deep ecology, social ecology, ecofeminism, bioregionalism) and then considers the contributions of continental European philosophy in an attempt to formulate a new “ground” for environmental thinking. At the center of this work is the relationship between a universal environmental ethic and a pragmatic, ecologically informed conception of the political.

He is also editing currently several books: Japanese and Continental Philosophy: Dialogues with the Kyoto School, with Bret Davis and Jason Wirth; Contemporary Italian Perspectives on Creativity (tentative title), with Silvia Benso; Asian and Comparative Perspectives on Ecology and the Environment (tentative title), with Hwa Yol Jung and Graham Parkes; Philosophy of Language: A Historical Reader (tentative title), with Timothy Engström; and The Anarchist Theory Reader: Philosophical, Religious, and Political Perspectives.

When he is not engaged in philosophical interests, Brian pursues the closely related activities of Zen practice, hiking, backpacking, camping, and fly angling (all preferably in high alpine locales), tinkering with and riding old machines (with a particular passion for those of classic British vintage), guitar picking, drinking fine wine and robust ales, and enjoying good company. Above all, he prefers to spend time with his pack: fellow outdoors enthusiast, philosophical collaborator-conspirator and sojourner in life and love Silvia, their son Erik, Clio the dog, and Calypso the cat.