Michael Neil Forster (born December 9, 1957) is a British-American philosopher and the

Alexander von Humboldt Professor The Alexander von Humboldt Professorship is an academic prize named after Alexander von Humboldt and awarded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation since 2008. The prize is intended to attract internationally leading scientists from abroad to Ger ...

, holder of the Chair in Theoretical Philosophy, and Co-director of the International Center for Philosophy at

Bonn University The University of Bonn, officially the Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (), is a public research university in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the () on 18 October 1818 by Frederick Will ...

, where he has taught since 2013. He is an expert on 18th- and 19th-century German philosophy, especially

Herder A herder is a pastoralism, pastoral worker responsible for the care and management of a herd or flock of domestic animals, usually on extensive management, open pasture. It is particularly associated with nomadic pastoralism, nomadic or transhuma ...

and

Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a 19th-century German idealism, German idealist. His influence extends across a wide range of topics from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political phi ...

Education and career

Forster earned his Ph.D. from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

in 1987, where he worked with

Raymond Geuss Raymond Geuss, FBA (; born 1946) is an American political philosopher and scholar of 19th and 20th century European philosophy. He is currently Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Cambridge. Geuss is primarily known ...

and

Michael Frede Michael Frede (; 31 May 1940 – 11 August 2007) was a prominent scholar of ancient philosophy, described by ''The Telegraph'' as "one of the most important and adventurous scholars of ancient philosophy of recent times." Education and career ...

. He became Assistant Professor of in Philosophy and the College at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

, rising to the rank of Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor before moving to Bonn. He remains a visiting professor at Chicago.https://philosophy.uchicago.edu/faculty/forster

Books

* ''Herder's Philosophy'' (Oxford University Press, 2018) * ''After Herder'' (Oxford University Press, 2012) * ''German Philosophy of Language from Schlegel to Hegel and Beyond'' (Oxford University Press, 2011) * ''After Herder'' (Oxford University Press, 2010) * ''Kant and Skepticism'' (Princeton University Press, 2008) * ''Wittgenstein on the Arbitrariness of Grammar'' (Princeton University Press, 2004) * ''Herder: Philosophical Writings'' (Ed., Cambridge University Press, 2002) * ''Hegel's Idea of a "Phenomenology of Spirit"'' (University of Chicago Press, 1998) * ''Hegel and Skepticism'' (Harvard University Press, 1989)

References

21st-century American philosophers Phenomenologists American philosophy academics Gadamer scholars Living people 1957 births University of Chicago faculty Hermeneutists Herder scholars Henry Wilde Prize winners Princeton University alumni Alumni of the University of Oxford Academic staff of the University of Bonn Scholars of modern philosophy American epistemologists American philosophers of language Hegel scholars {{US-philosopher-stub