Andrew Bowie

Andrew Bowie

Professor

  • TW20 0EX

Personal profile

Personal profile

Professor Bowie's research is concerned with core issues in modern philosophy, particularly those explored by the German tradition from Kant to the present. He does not see the philosophical issues in question as separable from other key cultural responses to the problems of the modern world, and has written extensively about music and literature as well as philosophy. His books are: Aesthetics and Subjectivity: from Kant to Nietzsche (First edition 1990, second edition 2003, Spanish edition 1996; Iranian edition 2008, Chinese edition planned); Schelling and Modern European Philosophy. An Introduction; Introduction to, edition and translation of F.W.J. von Schelling: ‘On the History of Modern PhilosophyFrom Romanticism to Critical Theory. The Philosophy of German Literary Theory (Iranian edition planned); Introduction to and Editor of Manfred Frank: ‘The Subject and the Text’. Essays in Literary Theory and Philosophy; Introduction to, edition and translation of F.D.E. Schleiermacher, ‘Hermeneutics and Criticism’ and Other WritingsIntroduction to German Philosophy from Kant to Habermas (which was enthusiastically endorsed by Jürgen Habermas)Music, Philosophy, and ModernityGerman Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (Arabic edition planned); Philosophical Variations: Music as Philosophical Language, Adorno and the Ends of Philosophy has just been published by Polity Press. These books and many other publications have helped bring the German tradition of modern philosophy to a much wider audience, and have been influential in philosophy, literary theory, musicology, and other areas of the humanities and social sciences. Professor Bowie has a long-standing concern with mediating between the European and analytical traditions of philosophy. His next book is on Aesthetic Dimensions of Modern Philosophy

He has supervised a very wide range of PhD topics, from, e.g., theses on Wittgenstein and Adorno, to theses on music and ethics, music and tragedy, philosophy and musical performance, to theses on modern literature and the history of the modern philosophy of language from Herder and Hamann to the present. He is particularly interested in cross-disciplinary work. He is an active jazz musician (saxophone), who has played with some of Britain's top jazz musicians, and is supervising theses on jazz and philosophy. https://soundcloud.com/andy-bowie

Current teaching on 

PY 2001/GM 2600 Introduction to European Philosophy 1: Kant to Hegel

PY 2003  Introduction to Modern European Philosophy 2: The Critique of Idealism

PY 3002/GM 3400 Modern European Philosophy 1; Husserl to Heidegger

PY 3003 Modern European Philosophy 2

Post Holocaust Philosophy on the MA Holocaust Studies

He is also at present in charge of the new MA in Modern Philosophy, which offers a chance to do post-graduate work on the relations between European and analytical philosophy, and in charge of the MA by Research in Philosophy.

Professor Bowie did a comparative literature PhD on History and the Novel (1980) at the University of East Anglia, studied German philosophy at the Free University of Berlin, was Professor of Philosophy at Anglia Ruskin University until 1999, and Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Philosophy department of Tübingen University. He was on the Benchmarking Academic Standards Group Philosophy for the QAA, and is on the Advisory Council of the Institute of Philosophy. He has lectured on philosophy in the USA, Japan, and all over Europe, and was keynote speaker for the Nordic Summer University, and Guest Fellow at a conference of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was Founding Director of the Royal Holloway Humanities and Arts Research Centre (HARC).