Meet the Faculty

James G. Hart

• Professor Emeritus, Department of Religious Studies

Education

• Ph.D. at University of Chicago, 1972

Contact Information

Background

After many years I continue to be a student of phenomenology, especially Husserl, and this is the framework of my approach to topics in the philosophy of religion as well as in social ethics and political theory. Furthermore, I connect Husserl to, e.g., Plotinus, process thought, German idealism, peace studies, ecological theory, as well as anarchist-communitarian theory. I taught graduate courses in, e.g., Husserl and Heidegger, as well as in most of these other matters. A lengthy outline of the kind of Husserlian philosophical theology I am proposing is in "A Precise of an Husserlian Philosophical Theology," in Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. Steven Laycock and James Hart (SUNY, 1986), as well as in "Michel Henry's Phenomenological Theology of Life: A Husserlian Reading of C'est Moi, La Verite" (Husserl Studies, 1999). What I mean by a Husserlian social ethics and anarcho-communist theory is evident in my "The Person and the Common Life: Studies in a Husserlian Social Ethics," in the Phaenomenologica series (Kluwer, 1992). Although I officially retired in the summer of 2001, I will come back and teach select courses in the department whenever possible.

Research Interests

• Philosophy of Religion
• Philosophical Theology
• Peace and Conflict studies

Publication Highlights

Books

The Piety of Thinking; Essays by Martin Heidegger, translation, notes and commentary by James G. Hart and John T. Maraldo, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976).

Co-Editor with Steven Laycock, Essays in Phenomenological Theology, (Albany: SUNY, 1986).

The Person and the Common Life: Studies in a Husserlian Social Ethics (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992).

Co-Editor with John Drummond, The Truthful and the Good: Essays in Honor of Robert Sokolowski (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1996).

Co-Editor with Lester Embree, The Phenomenology of Values and Valuing (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997).

Co-Editor with Tomis Kapitan of a volume of essays by Hector-Neri Castaneda, The Phenomeno-logic of the I: Essays in Self-Consciousness (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999)

Articles

"Contingency of Temporality and Eternal Being: A Study of Aspects of Edith Stein's Phenomenological Theology As It Appears Primarily in Endliches und Ewiges Sein," (Duquesne University: Silverman Institute for Phenomenology at Duquesne University, 2001), 34-68.

"I-ness and Otherness: A Review Article on Dan Zahavi's Self-Awareness and Alterity," Journal of Continental Philosophy, v. 34 (2001), 339-351.

"Parts of the Fink-Husserl Conversation," in The New Yearbook for Phenomology and Phenomenological Philosophy v. I (2001), 279-301.

"Hannah Arendt: The Care of the World and the Self," ed. John Drummond and Lester Embree in Phenomenological Approaches to Moral Philosophy (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002), 87-107.