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Staff Profile

Dr Michael Lewis

Senior Lecturer in Philosophy

  • Email: michael.lewis@ncl.ac.uk
  • Address: Department of Philosophy
    University of Newcastle Upon Tyne
    Tyne and Wear
    NE1 7RU
    United Kingdom
Background
Biography

I have taught philosophy at the University of Sussex (2007–9, 2011), the University of Warwick (2010), the University of the West of England (2011–2015), and the University of Newcastle upon Tyne (2016–), where I am Senior Lecturer in Philosophy. In the Autumn of 2022, I was a Visiting By-Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge.

At Newcastle I have been Senior Tutor in Philosophy, Combined Honours Advisor for Philosophy, and Head of Philosophy. I am currently Chair of the Board of Examiners and Study Abroad/Global Opportunities/Mobility Co-ordinator. I co-founded the Faculty Research Group in Critical Theory and Practice.


I am the founding editor and general editor of the Journal of Italian Philosophy.


If you are thinking of pursuing a PhD at Newcastle and your project closely aligns with something I am working on, or have worked on, do get in touch to see what's possible.


Research

An early encounter with Martin Heidegger’s thought (Heidegger and the Place of Ethics) initiated a consideration of the history of the relation between the empirical and the transcendental. In Heidegger the notion of an ideal transcendental subject is transformed by the notion of an essential facticity. An early work attempted to investigate how this notion is related to the conception of ‘nature’ that one finds in Heidegger’s work (Heidegger beyond Deconstruction: On Nature). This opened the way for a consideration of the genesis of the transcendental, the natural preconditions for the emergence of transcendental structures and subjectivity — a philosophy of nature perhaps: in the context of the human, I examined how this problem might be addressed by looking at two of its most extreme formulations, in the work of Jacques Derrida and Jacques Lacan (Derrida and Lacan: Another Writing); and in the case of the animal, I looked at it in the context of the relation between the human and the animal, understood in such a way that the animal is not just taken to be an imperfect harbinger of the human understood as the perfection and transcendence of nature, and the human being is that entity which is capable of demoting itself and seeing in the animal as such something like perfection (The Beautiful Animal: Sincerity, Charm, and the Fossilised Dialectic).

           The next stage of the project involves understanding how such a transition from animal to man, conceived in such a way, is possible, and that involves a lengthy examination of the notion of philosophical anthropology, particularly as it has been conceived and frequently reinvented in the 20th Century. This should issue in a text entitled The Reinvention of Man: Philosophy and Anthropology.

           At the same time, the project should also issue in a more specialised form, with an examination of Giorgio Agamben’s conception of the human being and the particular way in which he conceives the human to be related to ‘life’ in a broader sense. This text investigates the precise relation between three of the essential features of human life: language, (an understanding of) being, and political life, and will be entitled Agamben’s Theory of Grounding: Logic, Ontology, Politics).

Another text, entitled Philosophy, Biopolitics, and the Virus: The Elision of an Alternative, dealt with Agamben’s work on the so called ‘non-pharmaceutical intervention’ and the way in which the censorship of its critique reveals something about the way in which public discourse functions today, which the book sets itself in part to examine. A more general conception of this gesture, whereby dissent is expelled from the circle of logos and into the realm of madness, is also in development, so pervasive and dangerous has this gesture become. In part, perhaps this text can be said to be working out just why those who present themselves as moral guardians have found it so easy to dehumanise the human in general, and their opponents in particular.

In this vein, I am more and more concerned with questions of free speech, thought, and action, and the culture of cancellation and shunning, which I am trying to construe philosophically in terms of a certain conception of logos and a certain conception of negation, with a genealogy in the notions of exile and excommunication. In light of this, I am hoping one day to develop a narrower project to rethink the possibilities of the contemporary (British) university, so as to determine whether it is possible to pry it away from the latter kind of gesture, to which it has so readily fallen prey in its weaker moments, perhaps as a symptom or even a contributory factor with respect to its intellectual decline.

In this connection, among others, I am hoping to find time to conduct a serious philosophical investigation into the work of Ivan Illich, an avowed but still obscure influence on Agamben, in particular with respect to the theory of institutions and their counterproductivity. His work is also essential in conceiving forms of human community that fall outside of the institution (should the latter prove irremediable and irredeemable), or on its margins, and this in tandem with a certain conception of something like ‘populism’, which might be used to oppose a pervasive technocratic way of thinking, speaking, and acting. In this connection I am also attempting to write about the ever more frequent accusation of ‘conspiracy theorism’ aimed at those who deviate from a hegemonic conception, so often put about in a technocratic manner and tone.

 

In some ways in parallel with my study of Agamben’s work, and as a way of clarifying the context in which that has developed and been criticised, I have been attempting to explore the region of Italian Philosophy more generally (cf. The Bloomsbury Italian Philosophy Reader and the Journal of Italian Philosophy).

 

I am also interested in the place of breath, breathing and the stifling of breath or breathlessness in the history of philosophy, and have written a number of essays which have helped, in a small way, to contribute to the foundation and consolidation of the discipline of ‘critical respiratory studies’. This material may be said to bear some relation to my work on the stifling of breath that takes place in the constraints (or ‘gags’) placed upon free speech.

 

I remain interested in the continuing ramifications of the discipline of phenomenology with which I began (cf. Phenomenology: An Introduction (written with Tanja Staehler)).

 

Some examples of my writing may be found on the Academia.edu website, and a relatively full bibliography may be found in the list of publications available on the present site.

 

 

 

Current Doctoral Students

Calum Morgan, Thesis Topic: Geopolitics and Space in Heidegger, Deleuze and Guattari, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2023–

Oscar Tyler, Thesis Topic: (Post-)Kantian Philosophy and Genius, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2022–.

Emily Monaghan, Thesis Topic: Anthropology and Sexual Difference, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2022–

Naomi Harland-Smith, Thesis Topic: Animals in Philosophy and Law. University of Durham, 2021– (co-supervised with Durham Modern Languages & Newcastle Law).

Samuel Briault, Thesis Topic: Vision and Blindness: A Dialectical Materialist Approach. University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2021–.

Robert Atkinson, Thesis Topic: Psychoanalysis and Addiction, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2020– (co-supervised with Durham Modern Languages).

Justina Mitkute, Thesis Topic: How does the Human-Animal Connection Shape Human Identity? University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2020–25 (Creative Practice PhD in Documentary Film, Co-supervised with Newcastle Film, Culture Lab).

Jim Lloyd, Thesis Topic: Animal Perception, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2018–25 (funded by AHRC, co-supervised with Newcastle Fine Arts).

 

Recently Completed

Nicholas Brignell, Thesis Topic: Adorno and Hegel, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2018–25 (funded by AHRC). Completed.

Matthew Collins, Thesis Topic: Lacan on Sublimation, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2020–25 (funded by AHRC). Completed.

Tuba Ilhan Dalar, Thesis Topic: Reappraising Rawls' Kantianism through Hegel's Social and Political Thought, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2018–24 (funded by the Government of Turkey). Completed.

Marco Pavanini, Thesis Topic: Human Constitutive Technicity: The Evolutionary Turn in the Philosophy of Technology, University of Durham, 2019–24 (funded by AHRC, co-supervised with Durham Modern Languages). Completed.

Elliot Sturdy, Thesis Topic: Contemporary German Literature and the Middle Voice, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2019–23 (Co-supervised with Newcastle Modern Languages and Durham Modern Languages). Completed.

Lucy Carolan, Thesis Topic: Photography and Disorders of Memory, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2017–23 (funded by AHRC, co-supervised with Newcastle Fine Arts). Completed.

 

Research Identifiers/Citation Indices

Google scholar: https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=7-xqLdEAAAAJ&hl=en

Orcid id: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6373-9046

Scopus Author Id: 57193167301

Academia.edu: https://newcastle.academia.edu/MichaelLewis

Teaching


Office Hours: Term-time only, cf. sign on office door.


2024-25

  • Rationalism and Empiricism (Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, Malebranche, Berkeley)
  • Post-Kantian Philosophy: Materialism and Idealism (Hegel)
  • Early Twentieth Century Ontology and Epistemology (Walter Benjamin & Simone Weil)
  • Projects
  • Philosophical Approaches to the Humanities and Social Sciences (co-taught)


2023-24 (Sabbatical, Semester I)

  • Texts in Contemporary Philosophy: Henri Bergson’s Matter and Memory.
  • German Idealism (Hegel, Philosophy of History, Phenomenology of Spirit, Science of Logic)
  • Phenomenology (Semesters I & II) (Introduction to Phenomenology; Phenomenology and the End of the World: Anders, Jaspers, Blanchot, Derrida, Jonas)
  • Projects
  • Philosophical Theory: Thinking and Intepreting (co-taught)


2022-23 (Sabbatical, Semester I)

  • Post-Kantian Philosophy: Idealism (Fichte, Hegel, Schelling)
  • Phenomenology (Semester II) (Max Scheler, Hans Jonas, Emmanuel Alloa, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Henry)
  • Projects (All years)
  • Philosophical Theory: Thinking and Intepreting (co-taught)
  • MLitt Introduction to Continental Philosophy (a session introducing Ivan Illich as a Philosopher, & a session with visiting speaker Marco Piasentier on Biopolitics)


2021-22:

  • Rationalism and Empiricism
  • Ancient Philosophy I (The Pre-Socratics)
  • Post-Kantian Philosophy: Idealism (Between Kant and Hegel, the development of the critical philosophy from Reinhold to Hegel)
  • Phenomenology (Semester II) (Karl Löwith, Hans Blumenberg, & Dominique Janicaud, on Science, Technology, Nature, Language, and Anthropology)
  • Projects (All years)
  • Introduction to Continental Philosophy (Two sessions on Claude Levi-Strauss, Wild Thought)
  • The session on Post-Structuralism for Thinking Theories and Methods (on Saussure, Levi-Strauss, & Derrida)


2020-21:

  • Kantian and Post-Kantian Philosophy I: Idealism {this year, on the invention of anthropology in Kant, Herder, and Hegel}
  • Phenomenology {this year, on the myth of the given: Husserl, Marion, Heidegger, the Neo-Kantians, Wilfrid Sellars, Claude Romano}
  • Postmodern Political Thought (Jean-Luc Nancy and Community)
  • The Networked Society (on Marcuse, Horkheimer, Instrumental Reason and Formal Logic)
  • Projects (All years)
  • The session on Post-Structuralism for Thinking Theories and Methods, for postgraduates in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
  • Three sessions of the Introduction to Continental Philosophy/Research Assignments module on the MLitt Philosophy {Georges Bataille, anthropogenesis and cave paintings}


2019-20:

  • Kantian and Post-Kantian Philosophy I: Idealism
  • Phenomenology
  • Projects (All years)
  • The session on Post-Structuralism for Thinking Theories and Methods, for postgraduates in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
  • Two sessions of the Introduction to Continental Philosophy (two sessions on Agamben's Use of Bodies).

2018-19:

  • Kantian and Post-Kantian Philosophy I: Idealism
  • Phenomenology
  • Projects (1st and 2nd year)
  • Sessions on Phenomenology and Post-structuralism in Thinking Theories and Methods, for postgraduates in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences; one session on Alain Badiou for the MLitt Philosophy.

2017-18:

  • Philosophy and Religion
  • Knowledge and Human Interests
  • Meaning, Truth, and Language
  • Projects
  • A session on Postmodernism and Poststructuralism on the Postgraduate Research Methods module, for all doctoral students in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
  • Two sessions on the MLitt in Philosophy course, PHI9001 Research Assignments, concerning Agamben's What is Philosophy? and a research talk on Paolo Virno's Essay on Negation.

2016-17:

  • Philosophy and Religion, 2016–17.
  • European Philosophical Traditions II: Moral Philosophy and Human Nature, 2016–17.
  • Meaning, Truth, and Language, 2016–17. 
  • Cultural Contradictions of Scientific Rationality, 2016–17. 
  • Knowledge and Human Interests, 2016–17 (Seminars in Term 1).
  • Philosophy Project, 2016–17.
Publications