James F. Conant - Academic Work

Academic Work

Conant works broadly in philosophy and has published articles in Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mind, Aesthetics, German Idealism, History of Analytic Philosophy, and Skepticism, among other areas, and on a wide range of philosophers, including Kant, Emerson, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Josiah Royce, William James, Frege, Carnap, Wittgenstein, Putnam, Cavell, Rorty, and McDowell, among others.

Since the mid 1990’s Conant, together with Cora Diamond has advanced a “resolute reading” of Wittgenstein's early work which seeks to expose neglected underlying continuities between the philosopher's early and later approaches to philosophy, especially between his early Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and his later Philosophical Investigations. This resolute reading is meant to show that even in the Tractatus, the purpose of philosophy is the clarification of philosophical problems, aimed at the elucidation of the sentences of the language through which we express ourselves rather than at propounding philosophical theses. The ultimate aim of the reading is to also bring out neglected discontinuities between Wittgenstein's early and later thought and to reorient the interpretation of Wittgenstein's later work by clarifying precisely what it was in his early work which he sought to criticize. Most of the controversy surrounding this interpretation, however, has focused on the reading of the "Tractatus" which it presupposes.

Another area in which Conant works is the history of analytic philosophy, in which he has written especially about the work of Gottlob Frege, of Rudolf Carnap, as well as about the relation between the views of both of these figures and those of Wittgenstein. A related theme running throughout Conant's work is the relation between the ideas of Immanuel Kant, and the Kantian tradition more broadly, and the analytic tradition. Although his philosophical orientation is largely that of someone trained in the analytic tradition, Conant has also written a series of widely discussed essays on various so-called “Continental" Philosophers, most notably on Kierkegaard and on Nietzsche. It is especially in connection with his readings of specific texts by Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein that he explores the theme of how the literary form of a philosophical text is intertwined with its philosophical content. Conant has also written a number of essays exploring the treatment of philosophical ideas in literary texts, ranging from the short stories of Franz Kafka to the novels of George Orwell. A recurring topic throughout Conant’s work is that of philosophical skepticism. In this connection, he has drawn an influential distinction between two varieties of skepticism, which he calls “Cartesian skepticism” and “Kantian skepticism” respectively.

Aside from Cora Diamond, the four names in contemporary philosophy with which Conant's is most often linked are those of Stanley Cavell, Thomas Kuhn, John McDowell, and Hilary Putnam. He has worked with each of these philosophers and has written several essays on each of them. He has edited two volumes of Hilary Putnam's papers and co-edited (with John Haugeland) one volume of Thomas Kuhn's papers, with a second posthumous work by Kuhn soon to be completed.

Conant has taught as a visiting professor at the College de France, Potsdam University, University of Amsterdam, University of Bergen, University of Helsinki, University of Iceland in Reykyavik, University of Picardy in Amiens, and University of Uppsala. From 1990 to 1993 he was a Fellow at the Michigan Society of Fellows and from 2008 to 2009 at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. From 2006 to 2008, together with David E. Wellbery, he was a co-recipient of a Mellon Foundation Saywer Seminar Grant. He is the co-recipient of two Humboldt TransCoop Awards, one with Sebastian Rödl and one with Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer, each of which has facilitated numerous philosophical projects, workshops, and conferences sponsored jointly by the Departments of Philosophy at Leipzig University and the University of Chicago.

At the University of Chicago, Conant organizes and runs both the Wittgenstein Workshop (together with Michael Kremer) and The German Philosophy Workshop (together with Robert B. Pippin), each of which meets on a bi-weekly basis during the academic year and serves as a forum for both graduates students and international scholars. He serves on a number of academic advisory boards, including those of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen, the Berlin Center for Knowledge Research, the North American Nietzsche Society, and the Internationale Ludwig Wittgenstein Gesellschaft. He is also a member of the senior editorial board of the journal Wittgenstein-Studien: Internationales Jahrbuch für Wittgenstein-Forschung.

In summer 2011, the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Porto in Portugal hosted a conference titled The Logical Alien at 20, dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the publication of James Conant's paper "The Search for Logically Alien Thought".

Conant is currently working on four projects: a monograph on skepticism entitled Varieties of Skepticism, a co-authored collection of essays with Cora Diamond entitled Wittgenstein and the Inheritance of Philosophy, a book on film aesthetics entitled The Ontology of the Cinematographic Image, and a forthcoming collection of interpretative essays on a variety of philosophers entitled Resolute Readings.