CV
Stephen Howard
Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven stephen.howard [at] kuleuven.be
Andreas Vesaliusstraat 2, room 01.60 https://sites.google.com/view/stephenjhoward
3000 Leuven, Belgium
Areas of specialization and competence
AOS: Kant and early modern philosophy
AOC: Philosophy of science, post-Kantian/continental philosophy
Academic positions
2021–2024 – FWO Senior Research Fellow, KU Leuven.
2022–present – Visiting Lecturer in Philosophy, P.A.R.T.S. dance school, Brussels.
Apr. 2023 – Visiting Scholar, History of Philosophy Forum, University of Notre Dame.
Mar.–May 2022 – Visiting Scholar, ERC Early Modern Cosmology group, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.
2018–2021 – FWO Junior Research Fellow, KU Leuven.
Jun.–Sept. 2018 – Research Fellow, ICUB University of Bucharest.
Sept. 2017–Feb. 2018 – Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, KU Leuven.
Feb.–Aug. 2017 – Visiting Fellow (without stipend), University of Leipzig.
Education
2013 – 2017 PhD in Philosophy, CRMEP, Kingston University, London.
Thesis title: Kant and Force: Dynamics, Natural Science and Transcendental Philosophy. Awarded May 2017, no corrections.
2011 – 2013 MA Modern European Philosophy, CRMEP, Kingston University.
2006 – 2007 MSc English Literature, University of Edinburgh.
2003 – 2005 BA (Hons) English Literature, University of Newcastle.
Publications
Book
(2023) Kant’s Late Philosophy of Nature: The Opus postumum. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Elements series.
Journal articles
1. (forthcoming a) “The Cosmological Ideas in Kant’s Critical Philosophy: Their Unique Status and Twofold Regulative Use”. Southern Journal of Philosophy.
2. (forthcoming b) “D’Alembert’s Cosmological View of the Sciences and its Legacy in Kant”. Perspectives on Science.
3. (2022a) “Kant on Limits, Boundaries, and the Positive Function of Ideas”. European Journal of Philosophy 30.1: 64-78.
4. (2022b) “From the Boundary of the World to the Boundary of Reason: The First Antinomy and the Development of Kant’s Critical Philosophy”. HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 12.1: 225-241.
5. (2022c) “Kant’s Inaugural Dissertation and the Problem of Rational Cosmology”. Review of Metaphysics 76.2: 241-266.
6. (2022d) “The Essay and the Art of Interpretation: Caygill and Nietzsche”. Philosophy & Rhetoric 55.3: 274-285.
7. (2021) “Kant on the Fundamental Forces of Matter: Why Attraction and Repulsion?” Kantian Review 26.3: 413-433.
8. (2019a) “The Transition within the Transition: the Übergang from the Selbstsetzungslehre to the Ether Proofs in Kant’s Opus postumum”. Kant-Studien 110.4: 595-617.
9. (2019b) “Dreams of Forces and Pneumatology: Kant’s Critique of Wolff and Crusius in 1766”. Studi Kantiani 32: 91-115.
10. (2019c) (With Karin de Boer) “A Ground Completely Overgrown: Heidegger, Kant, and the Problem of Metaphysics”. British Journal for the History of Philosophy 27.2: 358-377.
11. (2018a) “Elastic Force in Kant's Early Works”. Revista de Estudios Kantianos 3.2: 190-207.
12. (2018b) “The Material Literary Form of Kant's Opus postumum”. Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy 29: 65-87.
13. (2018c) “Archaeology and/or Genealogy: Agamben’s Transformation of Foucauldian Methodology”. Journal of Italian Philosophy 1: 27-45.
14. (2017) “Why did Leibniz Fail to Complete his Dynamics?” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 25.1: 22-40.
Book chapters and conference proceedings
1. (forthcoming c) “Systematicity and the Definition of a Science: Physics in Kant’s Opus postumum”. In Kant and the Systematicity of the Sciences ed. Gabriele Gava, Thomas Sturm and Achim Vesper. London: Routledge.
2. (forthcoming d) (With Pavel Reichl) “On Progress in Metaphysics: Responses to the Berlin Academy's 1792/95 Prize Essay Question”. In Preisfragen and Controversies in the German Enlightenment ed. Tinca Prunea-Bretonnet and Christian Leduc. London: Bloomsbury.
3. (forthcoming e) (With Laura Herrera Castillo) “The Individual and the Cosmos”. In The Edinburgh Critical History of Early Modern and Enlightenment Philosophy ed. Stephen Howard and Jack Stetter. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
4. (forthcoming f) “Leibniz’s Conception of Place Against Casey’s Critique”. In The Possibilities of Place in Continental Philosophy ed. Jussi Palmusaari and Nicolas Schneider. London: Bloomsbury.
5. forthcoming g) “Kant’s Concept of Force and its Application in Physics and Psychology”. In The Concept of Nature in Classical German Philosophy ed. Luis Fellipe Garcia. Berlin: De Gruyter.
6. (2023a) “Physics as System in Fascicles X/XI of Kant’s Opus postumum” in Perspectives on Kant’s Opus postumum ed. Ansgar Lyssy and Giampiero Basile. London: Routledge, 50-70.
7. (2023b) “Kant’s Universal Natural History and the Analogical Method in Cosmology”. In Between Leibniz, Newton, and Kant: Philosophy and Science in the Eighteenth Century ed. Wolfgang Lefèvre. New edition. Dordrecht: Springer, 247-270.
8. (2018d) “Modes of Cognition, Proto-Transcendentalism and Force in Kant’s Living Forces”. In Akten des 12. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses ‚Natur und Freiheit‘ in Wien vom 21.-25. September 2015 ed. Violetta L. Waibel und Margit Ruffing. Berlin: de Gruyter, 875-883.
Edited volumes
(Ed. with Jack Stetter), The Edinburgh Critical History of Early Modern and Enlightenment Philosophy. Edinburgh University Press (under contract, expected 2023).
Howard Caygill, Force and Understanding: Writings on Philosophy and Resistance, edited and with an introduction by Stephen Howard. London: Bloomsbury, 2020.
Reviews
Ian Proops, The Fiery Test of Critique: A Reading of Kant's Dialectic. In Journal of the History of Philosophy (forthcoming).
Brandon Look, ed. Leibniz and Kant. In British Journal for the History of Philosophy 31.1 (2023): 144-147.
Marcus Willaschek, Kant on the Sources of Metaphysics: The Dialectic of Pure Reason. In Journal of Transcendental Philosophy 1.2 (2020): 251-256.
Maja Schepelmann, Der senile Kant? Zur Widerlegung einer populären These. In Kantian Review 24.4 (2019): 678-682.
J. Colin McQuillan, Immanuel Kant: The Very Idea of a Critique of Pure Reason. In Continental Philosophy Review 50.3 (2017): 403-10.
Robert Frodeman and Adam Briggle, Socrates Tenured: The Institutions of 21st-Century Philosophy. In LSE Review of Books (2017), online.
Justin E. H. Smith, Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy. In Radical Philosophy 196 (2016): 53-55.
Bryan Wesley Hall, The Post-Critical Kant: Understanding the Critical Philosophy through the Opus postumum. In Radical Philosophy 195 (2016): 65-66.
Jennifer Mensch, Kant’s Organicism. In Radical Philosophy 187 (2014): 49-52.
Grants
2022-2023 Notre Dame History of Philosophy Forum Small Grant.
2021-2024 Senior Research Fellowship, Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO).
2018-2021 Junior Research Fellowship, Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO).
2018 Research Fellowship, Research Institute of the University of Bucharest (ICUB). One year, shortened to 3 months in order to take up FWO fellowship.
2013-2016 UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, PhD scholarship.
2006-2007 UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, Research Preparation Masters scholarship.
Prizes
2016 British Society for the History of Philosophy graduate student essay prize, for “The Transition within the Transition: the Übergang from the Selbstsetzungslehre to the Ether Proofs in Kant’s Opus postumum”.
2015 Scottish Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy graduate student essay prize, for “Why Did Leibniz Fail to Complete his Dynamics?”
2013 CRMEP prize for academic excellence in MA Modern European Philosophy (highest mark in cohort).
2005 Spence Watson Prize, University of Newcastle (highest mark in cohort).
Invited talks
05/09/24 Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. Kant: Philosopher-Scientist. Paper title TBC.
08/11/23 Villa Vigoni Deutsch-Italienisches Zentrum für den Europäischen Dialog. Analogie und Wissenschaft in Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft / Analogia e scienza nella Critica del Giudizio di Kant. Paper title TBC.
19/11/22 Université Paris 8. Séminaire du Groupe de travail sur la philosophie allemande au XVIIIe siècle. “Kant on the Theoretical and Practical Uses of the Cosmological Ideas”.
16/11/22 Institut Historique Allemand, Paris. Philosophie, histoire et sciences à l’Académie de Berlin. “Kant’s ‘What is Enlightenment?’ and the Berlin Academy”.
11/11/22 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. Synthesis und Konstruktion in der klassischen deutschen Philosophie. “Does Kant in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science ‘Construct’ Anything?”.
25/09/22 Universität Trier. Essences, Dispositions and Laws in Kant. “Fundamental Forces and the Natures of Bodies”.
22/02/22 Ca' Foscari University of Venice. “Kant's Universal Natural History: Between Astronomy and Rational Cosmology”.
15/01/21 CRMEP, Kingston University, London. Seminar on “The Philosophical Essay” with Howard Caygill and Jacqueline Rose.
02/10/19 Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. “Kant on the Boundary of the World”.
27/09/18 University of Arad. From Natural History to the Metaphysics of Nature. “Thinking the World-Whole: Wolff, Crusius, and the Backdrop to Kant’s Antinomy”.
Other talks, selection (since 2018)
10/01/23 Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, colloquium of Prof. Marcus Willaschek. “Kant on the cosmological ideas”.
23/11/22 KU Leuven departmental talk. Response to François Ottmann’s “Kant's hypotheses non fingo: Epistemological aspects of his critical philosophy”.
21/11/22 UC Irvine. HOPOS Congress. “Kant and Astronomy”.
05/05/22 KU Leuven. Leuven Seminar in Classical German Philosophy. Response to Miguel Herszensbaun’s “Kant and the Production of the Antinomy of Pure Reason”.
29/04/22 UC San Diego. History of Philosophy Roundtable. “Kant’s Opus postumum”.
22/04/22 University of Edinburgh. BSHP Annual Conference. “Astronomy and Kant’s Critical Turn”.
17/12/21 Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University. Kantian Rationality Lab workshop. Ideas in Kant’s Transcendental Philosophy. “The Twofold Use of the Cosmological Ideas”.
29/05/21 KU Leuven. Leuven Kant Conference. “The Form of the Transition Problem in Kant's Opus postumum”.
26/02/21 KU Leuven. Rational Cosmology workshop. “The Cosmological Problem of Kant's Inaugural Dissertation”.
15/06/20 Venice-Bucharest-Princeton Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy. “The Leibnizian Cosmology of d’Alembert’s Encyclopaedism” (cancelled due to COVID-19).
09/08/19 University of Oslo. 13th International Kant Congress. “The Grundkräfte of Kant’s Dynamics: Why Attraction and Repulsion?”
15/06/19 Queen’s University Belfast. Scientiae. “Relative Space and Leibniz’s Conception of the Universe in the Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence”.
06/06/19 KU Leuven. Responses to Newton: The Impact of the Mathematical-Experimental Paradigm on Natural Philosophy. “An Occult Quality? Kant’s Reception of Newtonian Attractive Force in the Context of Eighteenth-Century Debates”.
24/05/19 KU Leuven. Leuven Kant Conference. “A Hidden Source: The Significance of Crusius for Kant’s Antinomy”.
18/04/19 Reading the Enemies lecture series, London. “Dominic Cummings: Errant Philosopher of Brexit”.
15/02/19 LMU Munich/IHS Munich. The Unfinished Synthesis – Kant’s Opus Postumum. “The relation between physics and cosmology in fascicles X-XI”.
16/10/18 University of Valencia. IV Congreso internacional de la Sociedad de Estudios Kantianos en Lengua Española. “Kant’s Critique of the Concept of ‘Force’ in Träume eines Geistersehers”.
27/09/18 ICUB University of Bucharest. ICUB seminar. “Kant’s Critique of Rational Cosmology”.
31/05/18 KU Leuven. Leuven Kant Conference. “Kant’s Critical Appropriation of Wolff’s and Baumgarten’s Metaphysical Concepts of Force”.
30/05/18 University of Utrecht. Dutch Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy. “Physical and Psychological Forces in Wolff, Baumgarten, and Kant”.
24/05/18 CRMEP, Kingston University London. Open Learning Week. “The History of Philosophy as a Philosophical Problem”.
Teaching
Spring 2023 P.A.R.T.S. dance school, Brussels. BA seminar course.
Passions and affects in the history of philosophy: Descartes, Spinoza, Freud, Deleuze, Ahmed, Barlant.
Autumn 2022 KU Leuven. Research MA seminar course.
Kant’s political philosophy.
Spring 2022 P.A.R.T.S. dance school, Brussels. BA seminar course.
Metaphysics and Critique: Leibniz, Hume, Kant, Marx, Beauvoir, Fanon.
Autumn 2021 KU Leuven. MA lecture course.
Metaphysics: Advanced Course. Spinoza’s Ethics and Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
2020-2021 KU Leuven. BA Paper with Seminar.
Simone Weil, Georges Bataille, Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault.
Autumn 2019 KU Leuven. BA lecture course.
History of Philosophy: Modern Philosophy II. Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche.
Autumn 2018 KU Leuven. BA seminar course.
Modern Philosophy (Texts). The concept of ‘world’ in early modern philosophy: Bruno, Descartes, Leibniz, Du Châtelet, Baumgarten, Kant.
Spring 2018 KU Leuven. Research MA seminar course.
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science.
Autumn 2017 KU Leuven. BA lecture course.
History of Philosophy: Modern Philosophy II. Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche.
Master’s and PhD supervision
2019-present PhD co-supervisor for Kwangchul Kim. Title: “Kant’s Approaches to the Human Mind in the Critique of Pure Reason”.
2022-23 Research MA thesis supervisor for Gioele Liscindi (on ideas of reason in Kant).
2022-23 Research MA thesis supervisor for Xinyi Tang (on Spinoza).
2022-23 MA thesis supervisor for James-Booth Jones (on Nietzsche and Kant).
2022-23 MA thesis supervisor for Lingxia Lui (on Spinoza).
2021-2022 Research MA thesis supervisor for Federico Dal Barco (on Kant’s Inaugural Dissertation).
2021-2022 MA thesis supervisor for Gioele Liscindi (on Nietzsche).
2018-2019 MA thesis supervisor for Bas Blaasse (on Schelling’s Naturphilosophie).
Administration and training
Ongoing Referee, in some cases multiple times, for: Southern Journal of Philosophy; Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science; Kantian Review; HOPOS; Epoché; Journal of Transcendental Philosophy; Kantian Journal; British Journal for the History of Philosophy (BSHP essay prize); Journal of Italian Philosophy; Intellectual History Review.
2020-present Co-organizer of the Leuven Seminar in Classical German Philosophy (online).
2019-present Co-founder and co-organizer of Philosophy and the World Out There, series of accessible talks and debates at Leuven.
2021 Organizer of workshop: Rational cosmology from the German and French Enlightenment to Kant (online), with three invited speakers and four speakers accepted through a call for papers.
2020 Professional development, “Lesgeven aan de KU Leuven [teaching at KU Leuven]: Basics of Course Design”
2019, 2020, 2021 Co-organizer of the Leuven Kant Conference (2020 and 2021: online).
2019 Co-organizer of conference: Responses to Newton: The Impact of the Mathematical-Experimental Paradigm on Natural Philosophy, Epistemology and Metaphysics.
2018-2020 Representative of ABAP (postdoc and PhD) staff category on departmental and programme committees.
Languages
English (native), German (C1), French (B1), Latin (reading)
References
Professor Karin de Boer
Institute of Philosophy
KU Leuven
Professor Eric Watkins
Department of Philosophy
UC San Diego
Professor Howard Caygill (doctoral supervisor)
Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy
Kingston University London