Biography

Espen Hammer is Professor of Philosophy at Temple University. He has previously held professorships at the University of Oslo (Norway) and University of Essex (UK), and visiting professorships at the New School for Social Research and University of Pennsylvania. He is a former Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the University of Frankfurt. His main interests are in Kant and German Idealism, social and political philosophy, modern European philosophy, phenomenology, Critical Theory, and aesthetics.

Curriculum Vitae

Selected Publications

Selected Monographs

• Adorno’s Modernism: Art, Experience, and Catastrophe (Cambridge University Press, 2015).
• Philosophy and Temporality from Kant to Critical Theory (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
• Adorno and the Political (Routledge, 2006).
• Stanley Cavell: Skepticism, Subjectivity, and the Ordinary (Polity Press, 2002).

Edited Books

• The Blackwell Companion to Adorno, co-edited with Peter E. Gordon and Max Pensky (Wiley-Blackwell, 2020).
• Kafka’s The Trial: Philosophical Perspectives (Oxford University Press, 2018).
• The Routledge Companion to the Frankfurt School, co-edited with Axel Honneth and Peter E. Gordon (Routledge, 2018).
• Theodor W. Adorno II: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers. Two volumes (Routledge, 2015).
• Pragmatik und Hermeneutik: Studien zur Kulturpolitik Richard Rortys, co-edited with Matthias Buschmeier (Felix Meiner Verlag, 2011).
• German Idealism: Contemporary Perspectives (Routledge, 2007).
• Stanley Cavell: Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen, co-edited with Davide Sparti and with a Postscript by Hilary Putnam (Fischer Verlag, 2002).

Scandinavian Monographs

• USA. En supermakt i krise (Kagge, 2021).
• Anstendighet og revolt: Noen betraktninger omkring Dag Solstads forfatterskap (Oktober, 2011).
• Det indre mørke: Et essay om melankoli (Inner Darkness: An Essay on Melancholia) (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 2004). The book has been translated into Swedish, Russian, and Serbian.

Translations

• Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft (Second Introduction and Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment introduced and translated into Norwegian) (Pax, 1995).

Recent Articles

• “Logic and Voice: Stanley Cavell on Analytic Philosophy,” Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy,forthcoming.
• “Wittgenstein and the Prospects for a Contemporary Literary Criticism,” in Robert Chodat and John Gibson (eds.), Wittgenstein and Literary Studies (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
• “Critical Theory,” in C. M. van den Akker, The Routledge Companion to History and Theory (Routledge, forthcoming).
• “Rorty’s Approach to Kant and Hegel,” in Martin Mueller (ed.), A Companion to Richard Rorty (Springer Verlag, forthcoming).
• “The Sixties,” in Lydia Goehr and Jonathan Gilmore (eds.), A Companion to Arthur C. Danto (Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming).
• “Adorno and Literature,” in Martin Shuster and Henry Pickford (eds.), Oxford Handbook to Adorno (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). 
• “Moods and Experience in Cavell,” in Paolo Marrati (ed.), Cavell and Modernism (Bloomsbury Press, forthcoming).
• “The Antinomy of Modernism and Anti-Modernism in Adorno’s Negative Dialectics,” in Paul Giladi (ed.), Hegel and the Frankfurt School: Traditions in Dialogue (Routledge, 2021), 33-52.
• “Critical Theory and the Challenge of Relativism,” in Martin Kusch (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Relativism (Routledge, 2020), 247-55.
• “Adorno’s Critique of Heidegger,” in Max Pensky, Peter Gordon and Espen Hammer (eds.), A Companion to Adorno (Wiley-Blackwell, 2020), 473-87.
• “Ideology and Experience: The Legacy of Critical Theory,” in Noel Carroll, Shawn Lot and Laura Teresa Di Summa-Knoop (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook for the Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 315-34.
• “Dewey, Adorno, and the Purpose of Art,” in Steven Fesmire (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Dewey (Oxford University Press, 2019), 471-88.
• “Reason, Agency, and History: Remarks on Kant and Benjamin, in History and Theory 57:3 (2018), 426-30. 
• “Kafka’s Modernism: Intelligibility and Voice in The Trial,” in Espen Hammer (ed.), Kafka’s The Trial: Philosophical Perspectives (Oxford University Press, 2018), 227-52.
• “Habermas and Ordinary Language Philosophy,” in Peter Gordon, Axel Honneth and Espen Hammer (eds.), The Routledge Companion to the Frankfurt School (Routledge, 2018), 336-48.
• “Literatur, Fiktionalität und Wirklichkeit,” in Gertrud Koch and Thomas Hilgers (eds.), Perspektive und Fiktion (Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2017), 139-58.
• “Husserl and the Inner-Outer Distinction,” in Marcia Morgan and Megan Craig (eds.), Richard J. Bernstein and the Expansion of American Philosophy: Thinking the Plural (Lexington Books, 2017), 141-56.
• “Experience and Temporality: Towards a New Paradigm of Critical Theory,” in Michael J. Thompson (ed.), PalgraveHandbook of Critical Theory (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 613-30.
• “Epistemology and Self-Reflection in the Young Marx,” in Kristin Gjesdal (ed.), Key Debates in Nineteenth Century Philosophy (Routledge, 2016), 275-86.
• “Happiness and Pleasure in Adorno’s Aesthetics,” Germanic Review 4:9 (2015), 247-59.
• “Literature and Politics,” in Noel Carrol and John Gibson (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Literature (Routledge, 2015), 451-61.
• “Hegel as a Theorist of Secularization,” in Hegel Bulletin 67:2 (2013), 223-44.