Matt Dinan
St. Thomas University (Canada), Great Books, Faculty Member
- St. Thomas University (Canada), Catholic Studies, Faculty Memberadd
- Political Theory, Politics and Literature, Classical Political Philosophy, Contemporary continental political philosophy, Political Science, Jacques Derrida, and 15 moreAristotle, Plato, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Thucydides, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Religion and Politics, Political Philosophy, Leo Strauss, Nicomachean Ethics, Soren Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard, Socrates, and Christianityedit
- I'm an Associate Professor in the Great Books program at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, NB, Canada, where I wa... moreI'm an Associate Professor in the Great Books program at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, NB, Canada, where I was also the co-ordinator of the Catholic Studies Program from 2014 - 2019. I do research in Ancient, Christian, and Contemporary political thought.
Before coming to STU, I taught for three years at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA, USA. I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from Baylor University in 2012.edit - Mary P. Nicholsedit
Some preliminary comments on the narrative style and the theme of judgement in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice for the 2022 ACTC Conference.
Research Interests: Aristotle and Jane Austen
According to Winthrop Bell’s analysis of the idea of Canada, a pioneering account of Canadian philosophy written during World War I, Canada’s essence involves intercultural interpretation. In terms familiar to the phenomenology and... more
According to Winthrop Bell’s analysis of the idea of Canada, a pioneering account of Canadian philosophy written during World War I, Canada’s essence involves intercultural interpretation. In terms familiar to the phenomenology and pragmatism in which he was trained, Bell shows how Canada, by creating a new culture founded upon intercultural respect, could replace monocultural imperialism and materialism with something better: a culturally diverse nation, serving wisdom from a unique conversation among Canadian peoples, but that is for all people. In this article, we describe Bell’s philosophy of Canada as interpretation and further apply it to the idea, practice, and end of reparations to Canada’s Indigenous peoples as an expression of loyalty to Canadian philosophy today.
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Søren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling has traditionally attracted interest from scholars of political theory for its apparent hostility to political philosophy, and more recently for its compatibility with Marxism. This paper argues for... more
Søren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling has traditionally attracted interest from scholars of political theory for its apparent hostility to political philosophy, and more recently for its compatibility with Marxism. This paper argues for a reconsideration of Kierkegaard's potential contributions to political theory by suggesting that the work's shortcomings belong to its pseudonymous author, Johannes de Silentio, and are in fact intended by Kierkegaard. Attentiveness to the literary development of the pseudonym allows us to see a Kierkegaard who is a deeper and more direct critic of Hegel's political philosophy than is usually presumed. By creating a pseudonym whose argument ultimately fails, Kierkegaard employs Socratic irony in order to point readers to the need to recover Socratic political philosophy as the appropriate adjunct to the faith of Abraham, and as an alternative to Hegelian, and post-Hegelian, political thought.
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Chapter Abstract: This chapter explores Friedrich Nietzsche's criticism of the "sovereign individual" in the second essay of On The Genealogy of Morals. It suggests that Nietzsche subtly connects this figure to the moral and political... more
Chapter Abstract: This chapter explores Friedrich Nietzsche's criticism of the "sovereign individual" in the second essay of On The Genealogy of Morals. It suggests that Nietzsche subtly connects this figure to the moral and political philosophy of Immanuel Kant and shows how Nietzsche's critique complicates attempts to theorize political community beyond the sovereign nation state. Nietzsche shows that autonomous, sovereign self of Kantian thought creates a "logic of sovereignty" that problematically intensifies our relationship to one another, and our ways of thinking.
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This paper reads Karel Čapek’s R.U.R. through the lens of Hannah Arendt’s critique of technology in The Human Condition. Arendt and Čapek share a suspicion that modernity’s attempts to overcome labor through the use of technology... more
This paper reads Karel Čapek’s R.U.R. through the lens of Hannah Arendt’s critique of technology in The Human Condition. Arendt and Čapek share a suspicion that modernity’s attempts to overcome labor through the use of technology undermines the human condition of natality. Indeed, the revolt of Čapek’s Robots dramatizes Arendt’s warnings of the dangers of a “society of laborers without labor” and “world alienation.” Both thinkers suggest that the dilemmas posed by modern technology cannot be resolved through “practical” means, but require loving attentiveness to the fragile conditions in which genuine natality can emerge.
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This paper compares Leo Strauss’s and Søren Kierkegaard’s views on esoteric writing. I argue that both thinkers have recourse to this kind of writing due to similar rhetorical dilemmas. Kierkegaard indeed uses indirect communication in... more
This paper compares Leo Strauss’s and Søren Kierkegaard’s views on esoteric writing. I argue that both thinkers have recourse to this kind of writing due to similar rhetorical dilemmas. Kierkegaard indeed uses indirect communication in his attempt to restore “simple” Christianity to a “Christian” age, and Strauss’s recovery of esoteric writing similarly aims to restore science—understood as philosophy—to the “Scientific” age. Both, in short, suggest that esoteric writing can help circumvent the distortions of late modern intellectual culture to recover and indeed spur readers toward philosophy or faith understood as ways of life. The encounter between Strauss and Kierkegaard on the subject of esoteric writing shows, contra some of Strauss’s recent interpreters, that there is considerable common ground between the postmodern needs of religious faith and philosophical rationalism, despite, and indeed because of, their ultimate incompatibility.
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This article explores Jacques Derrida’s notion of ‘democracy to come’, showing how democracy generates what might be described as a ‘deconstructive’ relation to foundational ideas. This article opens with an overview of the political... more
This article explores Jacques Derrida’s notion of ‘democracy to come’, showing how democracy generates what might be described as a ‘deconstructive’ relation to foundational ideas. This article opens with an overview of the political theory literature on Derrida’s political thought, arguing that scholars mistakenly present it as naïvely anti-foundationalist. The body of this article then briefly demonstrates that a Derridean approach to foundations does not aim to destroy or transcend them, but to interrupt our expectation that foundations be stable and certain. Turning to Politics of Friendship and Rogues, this article shows that Derrida’s notion of the democracy to come hinges around the idea that there is precisely such a ‘deconstructive’ relation between democracy’s dual foundations of freedom and equality. Democracy is thus itself ‘deconstructive’. Far from the inconsistent and insincere defender of democracy that his critics describe, Derrida emerges as a provocative contributor to democratic theory.
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This introduction provides an overview of the scholarly achievement of Mary P. Nichols. It also provides a summary of the essays in the volume Politics, Literature, and Film in Conversation.
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This paper argues that Mad Men's account of American modernity responds to the Platonic question of the relationship between poetry, philosophy, and politics in a novel way. For Mad Men, the significance of the 1960s lays not in any one... more
This paper argues that Mad Men's account of American modernity responds to the Platonic question of the relationship between poetry, philosophy, and politics in a novel way. For Mad Men, the significance of the 1960s lays not in any one political event, but in the new ways in which the political life of American modernity is able to mediate the longings of individual men and women in freedom. Mad Men suggests that political convention which attempts to recognize the integrity of human longings is, as one notable ad adduces, “the real thing.” In this way, Mad Men’s poetic modernity facilitates a tenuous truce in the old dispute between poetry and philosophy.
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A review of Peter Salmon's An Event, Perhaps
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A review of Zena Hitz's Lost in Thought
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A response to Agnes Callard’s New York Times article, “Should We Cancel Aristotle?” I argue that Aristotle’s presentation of slavery is in fact intended to show why it is unjust.
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A reflection on Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety in light of COVID19
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This volume presents a series of essays in honor of noted scholar of political theory, Mary P. Nichols. The essays reflect Nichols’ pathbreaking work in ancient Greek political thought, as well as her influential treatments of works of... more
This volume presents a series of essays in honor of noted scholar of political theory, Mary P. Nichols. The essays reflect Nichols’ pathbreaking work in ancient Greek political thought, as well as her influential treatments of works of literature and film in conversation with political theory. Part I: Conversations Concerning Love and Friendship features essays about the philosophical meaning of human connection and affection. Part II: Conversations Between Politics and Poetry looks at the political significance of art, and the ways in which political rule can be understood to be “artistic” or poetic. Part III: Conversations from Tragedy to Comedy considers whether the human need for community is something to be lamented or celebrated. Broad in scope and interdisciplinary in approach, the essays in this volume address authors such as Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Mary Wollstonecraft, G.W.F. Hegel, Jane Austen, Henry James, William Faulkner, Albert Camus, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, as well as the films of Woody Allen and Whit Stillman.
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Some preliminary thoughts on the theme of judgment in Pride and Prejudice.
Research Interests: Aristotle and Jane Austen
A review symposium contribution on Ann Ward's _The Socratic Individual_. Forthcoming in the Political Science Reviewer.