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