Humanities and Languages

Apaar Kumar teaches philosophy at the Humanities and Languages Division, School of Arts and Sciences, Ahmedabad University. He received his doctoral degree in Philosophy from Emory University in 2009. His research interests include history of modern philosophy (especially Kant), hermeneutics and phenomenology, and ethics. Currently he is working on a set of essays relating to two fairly diverse projects. The first of these projects consists in an attempt to offer a historically informed reconstruction of Kant’s theory of self-consciousness. Part of this work also involves engaging debates around the notion of the self in phenomenology and the philosophy of mind. His second project is concerned with exploring the possibility of articulating a hermeneutics from the perspective of the discursively marginalized. Within this larger ambit, he is at present looking at questions emerging at the interface of philosophical hermeneutics and social ontology in conversation with the work of Husserl, Heidegger and Gadamer. Professor Kumar has taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in the history of philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, hermeneutics and phenomenology, and Kant.

Areas of Specialisation:

• History of Philosophy, especially Kant 
• Hermeneutics and Phenomenology, especially Husserl, Heidegger and Gadamer
• Ethics

Areas of Competence:

• Early Modern Philosophy: Descartes to Kant
• 19th and 20th Century Continental Philosophy
• Philosophy of Mind
• Political Philosophy

Articles:

• “Kant on the Ground of Human Dignity,” Kantian Review, 26(3), June 2021, pp. 435-53.

• “Scheffler, Tradition and Value,” Journal of Value Inquiry, 53 (1), March 2019, pp. 1-17.
• “Kant and the Harmony of the Faculties: A Non-cognitive Interpretation,” Kantian Review 23 (1), March 2018, pp. 1-26.
• “Hermeneutics from the Margins: Provisional Notes,” Trópos. Journal of Hermeneutics and Philosophical Criticism, X (1), June 2017, pp. 163-83.
• “Transcendental Self and the Feeling of Existence,” Con-Textos Kantianos, No. 3, June 2016, pp. 90-121.
• “Kant’s Definition of Sensation,” Kant Studies Online (2014): 262-311.

Chapters in edited books:

• ‘On Andrea Kern’s “The Knowledge-View of Perception”’ in Miloš Vuletić and Ori Beck (eds.), Empirical Reason and Sensory Experience. Logic, Epistemology and the Unity of Science, vol. 60. Springer, Cham, 2024, pp. 131-33.
• “Gefühl in Kant’s Gefühl eines Daseins: Clues from Tetens and Feder” in Giuseppe Motta, Dennis Schulting and Udo Thiel (eds), Kant’s Transcendental Deduction and the Theory of Apperception: New Interpretations, Kantstudien-Ergänzungshefte, Volume 218 (Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2022), pp. 219-250.
• “Gandhi, Kant and Superstition” in S K Srivastava and Ashok Vohra (eds.), Gandhi in Contemporary Times (Routledge India, 2020), pp. 72-84.
• “Teaching Self-Respect: The Very Idea” in John Russon, Siby K George and P. G. Jung (eds.), Teaching in Unequal Societies (New Delhi: Bloomsbury, 2020), pp. 79-107.

Reviews:

• Review of Zed Adams and Jacob Browning (eds), Giving a Damn: Essays in Dialogue with John Haugeland, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 56 (1), January 2018.
• Review of Avery Goldman, Kant and the Subject of Critique: On the Regulative Role of the Psychological Idea, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 52 (1), January 2014.
• Review of Dennis Schulting and Jacco Verburgt (eds), Kant’s Idealism: New Interpretations on a Controversial Doctrine, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 51 (3), July 2013.
•  Review of Arthur Melnick, Kant’s Theory of the Self, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 48 (4), October 2010.

Undergraduate Courses:

• Introductory Courses in Philosophy, Logic and Ethics
• History of Early Modern Philosophy: Descartes to Kant
• 19th and 20th Century Philosophy
• Hermeneutics
• Aesthetics
• Philosophy of Self

Graduate Courses:

• Gadamer’s Truth and Method
• Ethical Theory: Korsgaard’s The Sources of Normativity
• Heidegger: Key Concepts
• Kant’s Moral Philosophy
• Philosophy of Art (Kant, Heidegger)
• Aesthetics (Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Heidegger)
• Husserl, Cartesian Meditations
• Social Ontology and Embodiment (Hegel, Marx, Husserl, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty)
• Self and Personhood (Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Fichte)

Peer-Reviewed Conferences:

• "Kant, Persons and Value Realism," Paper presented at the conference ‘Kant’s Project of Enlightenment’, 14th International Kant-Kongress, Bonn, 8-13 September, 2024.
• "Kant on Lying to the Murderer," Paper presented at the conference ‘Forms of Rationality: Kant and Modernity’, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Halle (Saale), Germany, 11-14 February 2024.
• “Kant and Spontaneity: The Absolute-Relative Debate,” Paper presented at the conference “Kant: Action, Belief and Knowledge” at the American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon, May 25-27, 2017.
• “Spontaneity and Self-Identity: B131-3 and the A-deduction,” Paper presented at the conference “Kant’s A-deduction” at the University of Leuven, Belgium, December 12-13, 2016.
• “Kant and ‘Empfindung’,” Paper presented at the American Philosophical Association (APA) Main Colloquium Program, APA-Eastern Division, Washington D.C., December 27-30, 2011.
• “Does Spontaneity Relate Rationally to Receptivity?” Paper presented at the American Philosophical Association (APA), Main Colloquium Program, APA-Pacific Division, April 6, 2006 [Eligible for the “APA Graduate Student Travel Award,” but had not applied for it].

Conferences Organized:

• “Rethinking Svaraj,” Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities (MCPH), January 15-17, 2015. Received 3.4 lakh rupees in grant money from the Indian Council for Philosophical Research (ICPR), New Delhi, India.

Invited Conference Presentations and Talks:

• “Kant, Persons and Value Realism,” Paper presented at the conferences:

  • “Agency, Mind and Value: Celebrating 300 Years of the Philosophy of Kant,” Invited speaker at the international Conference, IIT Bombay, February 27, 2025.

  • “Kant in Perspectives,” Invited speaker at the National Seminar, Department of Philosophy, Jadavpur University, February 24, 2025.

  • “50 years of Indian Philosophical Quarterly,” Invited speaker at the National Seminar, Department of Philosophy, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune, February 18, 2025.

• “Kant on Lying to the Murderer,” Invited Lecture, Department of Philosophy, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune, January 29, 2025 (sponsored by the Indian Council of Philosophical Research, New Delhi).
• "Kant’s Transcendental Strategy and the Notion of Coordination," Invited speaker at the "Virtual Kant Congress with a Cosmopolitan Purpose,” July 29, 2024.
• "Gadamer on Truth in the Human Sciences," Invited speaker at the national seminar "Mapping Experience and Consciousness," organized by the Balvant Parekh Centre for General Semantics and Other Human Sciences, Baroda, July 23, 2024.
• Invited Comment on Andrea Kern's “‘Perceiving that p’ - Capacities, Opportunities and Hindrances.” Invited Discussant, Perceptual Experience and Empirical Reason. A Virtual Conference held by the University of Pittsburgh, December 3-5, 2021.
• “Reformed Empiricism and the Unempirical Rational,” Invited speaker at the international conference ‘Reformed Empiricism and Its Prospects’, Department of Philosophy, Ashoka University, February 14-16, 2020.
• “Kant on the Feeling of Existence: Considerations from Tetens and Feder,” Invited Lecture, Philosophy Colloquium, Ashoka University, April 10, 2019.
• “Teaching Self-Respect: The Very Idea,” Invited Speaker at the international conference “The Ethics of Teaching in Pluralistic and Unequal Societies,” Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Bombay, November 22-24, 2018.
• “Gefuehl eines Daseins in Kant, Tetens and Feder: On the Plausibility of a Continuity Thesis,” Invited Speaker at the conference “Immanuel Kant: Die Quellen der Apperzeption,” Department of Philosophy, University of Graz, Austria March 16-17, 2018.
• “Kant’s View of Human Dignity: Remarks on a Recent Debate,” Invited Speaker at the national workshop, Department of Philosophy, Pune University, January 6, 2018.
• “Gadamer on Truth: Art, History, Hermeneutics,” Invited Speaker in the series “German Intellectual Legacy: From Kant to Habermas,” organized by the Goethe Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai, and the Department of German Studies, University of Mumbai, December 9, 2017.
• “What Ought I to Do? An Outline of Kant’s Practical Philosophy,” Invited Speaker in the series “German Intellectual Legacy: From Kant to Habermas,” organized by the Goethe Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai, and the Department of Philosophy, University of Mumbai, August 22, 2015.
• “Reason and Morality,” Invited speaker at the Second Summer School in Philosophy of Education: Rationality and Its Discontents, Azim Premji University, June 12, 2015.
• “Transcendental Self as Feeling,” Invited speaker at the Mind-Epistemology Conference at New York University, Abu Dhabi, April 16-17, 2015.
• “Introduction to Heidegger,” Series of lectures (invited) delivered at the Symbiosis School for the Liberal Arts (SSLA), Pune, India, March 25-31, 2015 [duration of lectures: 20 hours].
• “Writing the Residue: Hermeneutics and Svaraj as Intellectual Self-Determination,” Paper presented at the conference “Rethinking Svaraj” at the Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities (MCPH), January 17-19, 2015.
• 2014 “Taking Pleasure in an Aesthetic Performance: Notes towards a Kantian Theory of Aesthetic Reception,” Paper presented at the conference “Aesthetics-in-Performance,” 3-day seminar in Heggodu, Karnataka, December 27-29, 2014.
• “Transcendental Self as Feeling,” Paper presented at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, December 23, 2013.
• “Theology as the Handmaiden of Philosophy? Kant on the Relationship between Faith and Reason,” Paper presented at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, December 20, 2013.
• “Theology as the Handmaiden of Philosophy? Kant on the Relationship between Faith and Reason,” Paper presented at the workshop “Science and Faith,” Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities, Manipal, November 9, 2013.
• Comment on Elizabeth Robinson, “Kant on Freedom, Causality and Natural Disasters,” Metaphysical Society of America Meeting, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, March 12, 2011.
• “Nietzsche and Metaphor,” Paper presented at the Department of Philosophy, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, August 30, 2005.

• 2021-present: Associate Professor of Philosophy, Humanities and Languages Division, School of Arts and Sciences, Ahmedabad University, India
• 2018-2021: Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Humanities and Languages Division, School of Arts and Sciences, Ahmedabad University, India 
• 2014-18: Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities (MCPH), Karnataka, India
• 2011-13: Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, Oxford College of Emory University, GA, USA    
• 2009-11: Visiting Instructor, Department of Philosophy, Oxford College of Emory University, GA, USA

• DAAD Research Grant (10-month research fellowship), 2007-08, for dissertation research at Eberhard-Karls Universitaet, Tuebingen (Advisor: Manfred Frank)
• Department of Philosophy, Emory University, Beck Travel Grant, 2008-09, $16,500, for dissertation research at Eberhard-Karls Universitaet, Tuebingen (Advisor: Manfred Frank)
• Freie Universitaet-Emory University Exchange Fellowship (10 months), 2005-06, for dissertation research at Freie Universitaet, Berlin    
• Department of Philosophy, Emory University, 2006, Graduate Conference Travel Funding ($650), for presenting a colloquium paper at the Pacific American Philosophical Association (APA) conference
• Department of Philosophy, Emory University, Language fellowship for two months’ intensive training in German, 2004, Goethe-Institut, Mannheim, Germany 
• Department of Philosophy, Emory University, 2001-05, Graduate Fellowship (full tuition waiver and $15,000 stipend per year) 
• University of Chicago, 1999-2000, full tuition waiver; and International House Residential Fellowship Stipend ($3,480) which covered board, and with student job at the International House, sustenance for 1999-2000