Babette Babich


Babette Babich is an American philosopher who writes from a continental perspective on aesthetics, philosophy of science, especially Nietzsche's, and technology, especially Martin Heidegger's and Günther Anders, in addition to critical and cultural theory.

Career

Including research work at the Université Catholique de Louvain, Université François-Rabelais, Tours, Freie Universität Berlin and Universität Tübingen Babich has a doctoral degree from Boston College. She taught at Denison University and Marquette University before her current position at Fordham University in New York City in addition to an honorary appointment as Visiting Professor of Theology, Religion and Philosophy, University of Winchester, England, she has also taught, as visiting professor, most recently, at the Humboldt University, Berlin as well as at the Universität Tübingen, The University at Stony Brook, Georgetown University, the School of Visual Arts in Chelsea, University of California at San Diego, and the Juilliard School.

Work

In addition to philosophy of science inspired by Nietzsche, Paul Feyerabend, Ludwik Fleck, etc., Babich writes on AI, philosophy of technology as well as philosophy of art, including philosophy of music, museum culture and poetics, film, television, and digital media, as well as life-size bronzes in antiquity, and the stylistic difference between analytic and continental philosophy.
Over the years, Babich has contributed to contemporary debates in philosophy of science as well as the history of science and sociology of science and has written on ecology, especially aether and animal philosophy. She specializes in the writings of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Hölderlin and she engages the work of Theodor Adorno, Giorgio Agamben, Günther Anders, Paul Feyerabend, Bruno Latour, Georges Bataille, Jean Baudrillard, Ludwik Fleck, Ivan Illich, Paul Virilio, Peter Sloterdijk, and Slavoj Žižek.
Babich is the author of a range of studies foregrounding the role of politics in institutional philosophy, particularly the analytic-continental divide but also on the question of gender and agism. A student of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jacques Taminiaux, she also worked with Jacob Taubes and Paul Feyerabend among others. As an undergraduate, she studied biology at Stony Brook University along with David Allison, Don Ihde, and Patrick Aidan Heelan in philosophy.
In 1995, she founded the journal New Nietzsche Studies, echoing the title of the 1974 book, The New Nietzsche, the continentally minded collection edited by David Blair Allison.

Books

Edited collections

  • . Berlin: de Gruyter, 2019.
  • . Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017.
  • New Nietzsche Studies. 1996 - ongoing.
  • The Multidimensionality of Hermeneutic Phenomenology. Frankfurt am Main: Springer, 2013.
  • Heidegger und Nietzsche. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2012.
  • Nietzsche, Habermas, and Critical Theory. Amherst, New York. Prometheus Books Humanity Books Imprint. 2004.
  • Hermeneutic Philosophy of Science, Van Gogh's Eyes, and God: Essays in Honor of Patrick A. Heelan. S.J. Dordrecht. Kluwer. 2002.
  • Nietzsche, Theories of Knowledge and Critical Theory: Nietzsche and the Sciences I Dordrecht. Kluwer. 1999.
  • Nietzsche, Epistemology and Philosophy of Science: Nietzsche and the Sciences II Dordrecht. Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1999.
  • From Phenomenology to Thought, Errancy, and Desire: Essays in Honor of William J. Richardson, S.J. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Dordrecht. 1995.