Jon Stewart (philosopher)


Jon Bartley Stewart is an American philosopher and historian of philosophy. He specializes in 19th century Continental philosophy with an emphasis on the thought of Kierkegaard and Hegel. He has also worked in the field of Scandinavian Studies and has made the culture of the Danish Golden Age better known internationally. Stewart currently works as a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy at the Slovak Academy of Sciences.
WWW jonstewart.dk

Education and career

Stewart earned his BA in Philosophy in 1984 from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he studied with . He received his MA in 1986 and his PhD in 1992 from the University of California, San Diego, where he studied with Robert B. Pippin, Frederick A. Olafson and Henry Allison.
After his dissertation he worked at a post-doctoral scholar at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, the Université Libre in Brussels, and the Humboldt-Universität in Berlin.
Starting in 1996 Stewart worked for several years at the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre at the University of Copenhagen. In 2003 he defended his Habilitation thesis at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Copenhagen. In 2007 he completed a second Habilitation thesis, this time in Philosophy. In the same year he was elected into the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. He worked at Harvard University from 2016 to 2017.
He has held guest professorships the University of Iceland, the Universidad de los Andes, Santiago de Chile, the Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City, the Charles University, Prague, University of Szeged, Hungary, and the Universidad Panamericana, Aguascalientes, Mexico.
He has won the Book Prize of the Slovak Academy of Science in the years 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2023. In the year 2022 he was awarded the Slovak Academy of Sciences Prize for Scholarly Work for previous year.
In 2020 he was awarded the title Professor h.c. by the University of Szeged, Hungary.
In 2021 he was the recipient of The Slovak Academy of Sciences’ Honorary Plaque of Ľudovít Štúr for Services to the Humanities and Social Sciences.
His book Hegel’s Century: Alienation and Recognition in a Time of Revolution, won the PROSE Award for 2022 for the category “Philosophy,” awarded by The Association of American Publishers.
He is currently the editor-in-chief of the journal, and the co-editor of the and . He is the series editor of,, and '. From 2007-2017 he was the editor-in-chief of the now completed series, .

Academic work

Stewart's second book, Kierkegaard's Relations to Hegel Reconsidered marked a major shift in Kierkegaard studies. It was widely reviewed in academic journals, as well as by a Danish newspaper. It is generally agreed that Kierkegaard's Relations to Hegel Reconsidered impacted research in many ways.
In continuing to show the relevance of culture and history to understanding the intellectual and philosophical debates of the Danish Golden Age, in 2007 Stewart published A History of Hegelianism in Golden Age Denmark, Tome I, The Heiberg Period: 1824-1836 and A History of Hegelianism in Golden Age Denmark, Tome II, The Martensen Period: 1837-1842. These studies constituted the most detailed investigations into the influence of Hegel's philosophy on Danish Golden Age culture.

Books

The Unity of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit: A Systematic Interpretation, Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press 2000. xv + 556pp. Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel Reconsidered, New York: Cambridge University Press 2003. xix + 695pp. A History of Hegelianism in Golden Age Denmark, Tome I, The Heiberg Period: 1824-1836, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 2007. xxi + 629pp. A History of Hegelianism in Golden Age Denmark, Tome II, The Martensen Period: 1837-1842, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 2007. xx + 775pp. Idealism and Existentialism: Hegel and Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century European Philosophy, New York and London: Continuum International Publishing 2010. xv + 282pp. The Unity of Content and Form in Philosophical Writing: The Perils of Conformity, London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney: Bloomsbury 2013. ix + 217pp. The Cultural Crisis of the Danish Golden Age: Heiberg, Martensen and Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press 2015. xxii + 337pp.Søren Kierkegaard: Subjectivity, Irony and the Crisis of Modernity, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2015. xvii + 210pp. Hegel’s Interpretation of the Religions of the World: The Logic of the Gods, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2018. xix + 321pp. Faust, Romantic Irony, and System: German Culture in the Thought of Søren Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press 2019. xviii + 407pp.The Emergence of Subjectivity in the Ancient and Medieval World: An Interpretation of Western Civilization, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2020. xiv + 399pp.Hegel’s Century: Alienation and Recognition in a Time of Revolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2021. xi + pp. 338pp.An Introduction to Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion: The Issue of Religious Content in the Enlightenment and Romanticism, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2022. xiii + 277pp. A History of Nihilism in the Nineteenth Century: Confrontations with Nothingness, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2023. xi + 322pp.

Translation monographs

Heiberg’s On the Significance of Philosophy for the Present Age and Other Texts, ed. and trans. by Jon Stewart, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 2005. xxii + 467pp. Heiberg’s Speculative Logic and Other Texts, ed. and trans. by Jon Stewart, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 2006. xviii + 387pp. Heiberg’s Introductory Lecture to the Logic Course and Other Texts, ed. and trans. by Jon Stewart, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 2007. xvii + 334pp. Heiberg’s Contingency Regarded from the Point of View of Logic and Other Texts, ed. and trans. by Jon Stewart, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press 2008. xvi + 457pp. Mynster’s “Rationalism, Supernaturalism” and the Debate about Mediation, ed. and trans. by Jon Stewart, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press 2009. xvi + 683pp. Heiberg’s Perseus and Other Texts, ed. and trans. by Jon Stewart, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press 2011. xiii + 408pp. Sibbern’s Remarks and Investigations Primarily Concerning Hegel’s Philosophy, ed. and trans. by Jon Stewart, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press 2018. xvi + 451pp. Poul Martin Møller’s Thoughts on the Possibility of Proofs of Human Immortality and Other Texts, ed. and trans. by Finn Gredal Jensen and Jon Stewart, Leiden and Boston: Brill 2022. xxi + 515pp..

Public Interviews and Newspaper Articles

  • Peter Daubner, “,” actuality.sk, February 9, 2025.
  • Andrea Nozdrovická, “,” September 18, 2024:
  • , March 13, 2024: James Ellis, “Nihilism of the 19th Century with Jon Stewart”
  • Katarína Gáliková, “,” September 18, 2023:
  • Podcast for New Books Network, August 9, 2023: Morteza Hajizadeh, “, Cambridge University Press 2023”.
  • Matúš Beňo, “,” The Slovak Spectator, September 5, 2022.
  • Peter Dlhopolec, “,” Slovak Spectator, February 4, 2022.
  • Eliana de Castro, “,” in Fausto Mag., November 27, 2017.

Grants and fellowships

Group grants and projects

  • 2005-2006: Project Coordinator, Øresund Summer University Courses, Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre, University of Copenhagen
  • 2005-2007: Project leader, “Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources” funded by the Danish Research Council for the Humanities, a branch of the Danish Research Agency
  • 2011-2014: Project leader, “The Nordic Network for Kierkegaard Research” funded by Nordforsk.
  • 2019-2022: Project leader, “Individual and Collective Subjectivity: Historical and Contemporary Issues,” cooperation of the Institute of Philosophy at the Slovak Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Philosophy at the Polish Academy of Sciences, supported by Inter-Academic Agreement, MAD.