Dr Jack Wearing

Research and Teaching

My research is focused primarily on the concept of humanity in Kantian and Post-Kantian Philosophy. My doctoral thesis, titled ‘Ethics and Humanity in (Post-)Kantian Philosophy’, brought together work in ethics, political philosophy, and history of philosophy, examining the normative implications of conceptions of ‘the human’ in the work of four philosophers: Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger, Judith Butler, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Bringing these thinkers into productive dialogue, I argued that any plausible form of humanism must oppose hierarchies of moral standing among human beings while avoiding forms of anthropocentrism that fail to acknowledge our obligations toward non-human animals. 

I am currently working on two papers on themes related to the thesis: a critical discussion of Peter Singer’s 'argument from marginal cases' and an article on the relationship between objectification and what Peter Strawson has called the ‘objective attitude’. I am also working on a paper on Kant's aesthetics and am in the early stages of developing a research project on the politics of grief, drawing on Butler's account of 'grievability'. 

I teach General and Moral Philosophy at Corpus, as well as offering tutorials on a range of Finals papers, including 109. Aesthetics, 112. The Philosophy of Kant, 113. Post-Kantian Philosophy (Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre), 129. The Philosophy of Wittgenstein, and 198. Feminist Theory.