Research

I currently work on two projects:

My first research project is on Heidegger’s social ontology. This project aims to rectify the popular conception that Heidegger had nothing substantial to say about human coexistence, let alone anything of lasting value. I do so by (i) reconstructing a coherent account of Heidegger’s social ontology as it appears in his published texts, lecture courses, and notebooks and (ii) showing how Heideggerian insights contribute to ongoing discussions on the nature of social cognition, collective intentionality, and social normativity.

My second research project develops a phenomenological approach to group responsibility. Broadly speaking, I am interested in the way agency, intersubjectivity, and ethical demands play together in making us morally responsible for doing things that vastly exceed what we can do as individuals. In contrast to those accounts of group responsibility that take their points of departure in a preconceived and robust account of group agency, I take my point of departure in our group-directed moral emotions—what I, alluding to Strawson, call our group-directed reactive attitudes. To name a few examples, we resent Amazon for mistreating its workers, we are ashamed of our nation’s colonial past, and we are outraged that Neo-Nazis vandalise Jewish graveyards. My suggestion is that a close examination of the phenomenology of these group-directed reactive attitudes—that is, their intentional, intersubjective, and emotional structure—will yield a more exhaustive and detailed account of when it is appropriate to hold a group morally responsible for its actions or inactions. This research is funded by the Carlsberg Foundation (here and here).

Books

2023 Heidegger's Social Ontology: The Phenomenology of Self, World, and Others, Cambridge University Press


Refereed Journal Articles

Forthcoming "A Pluralist Approach to Joint Responsibility" in Philosophy & Public Affairs

2021 "Shared Action: An Existential Phenomenological Account" in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences

2020 Heidegger and the genesis of social ontology: Mitwelt, Mitsein and the problem of other people” in European Journal of Philosophy

2020 "Fænomenologi og antropocentrisme" in Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift 

2020 "The Ontological Problem of Futurity: Temporality and Possibility in Phenomenology, Messianism, and Hyper-Chaos" in Trópos. Journal of Hermeneutics and Philosophical Criticism

2019 Relationality and Commitment. Ethics and Ontology in Heidegger’s Aristotle” in Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology

2019 "Hospitality, Responsibility, and Community: A Political Phenomenological Reading of Antigone” in Raphisa

2018 Shame, Belonging, and Biopolitics: Agamben Among the Phenomenologists” in Human Studies

2017 Depopulation: On the Logic of Heidegger’s Volk” in Research in Phenomenology

2017 At bo med Heidegger: En læsning af beboelsesproblematikken i det sene forfatterskab” in Res Cogitans

2015 Agambens kairologi: Erfaring og den messianske tid” in Slagmark

2015 Nostalgic Freilassen: Emancipation beyond Empowerment” in Trópos. Journal of Hermeneutics and Philosophical Criticism


Other Journal Articles

2014 “Redemptive Revolutions: The Political Hermeneutics of Walter Benjamin” in Crisis and Critique

2014 “‘I could call you mad, were you not my father’: On Madness and Sovereignty” in Semikolon

2013 “Capital and Power: Foucault and Marx on the Early Capitalist Period” in Hinge: A Journal of Contemporary Studies


Reviews and Criticism

2020 “Heideggers etik?” in Slagmark

2016 “Om en posthum dialog mellem Benjamin og Heidegger. Benjamin and Vardoulakis (ed.): Sparks Will Fly” in Slagmark

2015 “Behovet for en husven. Martin Heidegger: Sprog og hjemstavn” in Filosofiske anmeldelser


Other Publications

2019 ”Hvordan eksisterer fællesskaber?” at Baggrund