Website: http://people.bu.edu/pkatsa
Interests: Nineteenth-century Philosophy, Ethics, and Philosophy of Action

Paul Katsafanas received his B.A. from Vassar College and his Ph.D. from Harvard University. His areas of interest include nineteenth-century philosophy, ethics, and philosophy of action. His research focuses on questions at the interface between ethics and philosophy of mind, including the way in which normative claims might be justified; the nature of self-consciousness; the nature of agency; the notion of drive; and the concepts of free agency and unified agency.

Selected publications:

“The Relevance of History for Moral Philosophy: A Study of Nietzsche’s Genealogy,” forthcoming in The Cambridge Critical Guide to Nietzsche’s ‘On the Genealogy of Morality’, Simon May (ed.), Cambridge University Press.

“The Concept of Unified Agency in Nietzsche, Plato, and Schiller,” forthcoming in Journal of the History of Philosophy.

“Deriving Ethics from Action: A Nietzschean Version of Constitutivism,” forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

“Activity and Passivity in Reflective Agency,” forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Volume 6, Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford University Press.

“The Problem of Normative Authority in Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche,” forthcoming in a volume on Nietzsche and moral philosophy, David Owen and Aaron Ridley (eds.), Oxford University Press.

“Philosophical Psychology as a Basis for Ethics,” International Studies in Philosophy: Conference Proceedings of the North American Nietzsche Society, forthcoming in volume 42.3.

“Nietzsche’s Philosophical Psychology,” in John Richardson and Ken Gemes (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche, Oxford University Press, forthcoming.

“Nietzsche on Agency and Self-Ignorance,” International Studies in Philosophy: Conference Proceedings of the North American Nietzsche Society, forthcoming in volume 40.3.

“Nietzsche’s Theory of Mind: Consciousness and Conceptualization,” European Journal of Philosophy 13 (April 2005), 1-31.