Profile
Abstract
Adrian Haddock is Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Leipzig. Between 1995 and 2004 he studied English Literature, Film Studies, and Philosophy at various universities in England. He then worked at the University of Stirling in Scotland - first as Lecturer in Philosophy (from 2004), and then (from 2011) as Senior Lecturer in Philosophy. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Universities of Oslo (in 2008), Chicago (in 2011), and Leipzig (in 2016). Between 2017 and 2018, he was the recipient of an Experienced Research Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, based at the University of Leipzig.
Professional career
- 09/2004 - 08/2011
Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Stirling, GB. - 09/2011 - 09/2022
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Stirling, GB. - since 04/2023
Since 2023 I have been teaching and researching at the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Leipzig.
Education
- 09/1995 - 08/1998
BA in English Literature and Film Studies at the University of East Anglia, GB. - 09/1998 - 08/1999
MSc in Philosophy at the London School of Economics, GB. - 09/1999 - 08/2003
PhD in Philosophy at the University of Exeter, GB.
His research centres on the idea of self-consciousness, and its significance for philosophy in general. At its heart is the difficulty of how the self-conscious subject can find itself in the spatial and temporal world. It explores the connection between this difficulty and the idea that philosophy is itself a reflection on a manifold that is localized in space and time: namely, language. In this way, it seeks both to thematise and to exemplify the unity of analytical philosophy, and German Idealism. The philosophers he finds most inspirational are Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Frege, Wittgenstein, and Anscombe.
His teaching covers the entire field of theoretical philosophy, both historically and systematically. The focus is on philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and action, aesthetics, German Idealism, and the history of philosophy.
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Plato, Theaetetus
A young man of “extraordinary natural gifts” is introduced to Socrates, and together they embark on a quest to say “what, exactly, knowledge really is”. The result is a wide-ranging exploration of some of the most fundamental issues in theoretical philosophy, including: the relation between knowledge and perception; the possibility of reference; the idea of propositional articulation; and the possibility of falsehood.
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Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed
In watching a film, we view unseen: we are extruded from its world. That is a basic metaphysical condition of the medium, from which Cavell develops an account of its nature. He discusses (amongst other things): the idea of acting in film; the cinematic significance of sound and colour; the idea of cinematic self-consciousness; and the relation between film and artistic modernism.
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Subject and Object
That the subject, or the I, is not an object in the world is one of the most fundamental insights in philosophy. It is also one of the most difficult. It is an insight that is often associated with Kant, and with later German Idealism. But in these lectures, we consider how this insight relates to some seminal writings of analytic philosophy.