Chandler Hatch is a philosopher who joined the Humanities and Languages division of the School of Arts and Sciences in January 2022 as Assistant Professor. Prior to joining Ahmedabad University, he was completing his PhD at Harvard University in the USA, where he has taught courses on the history of political philosophy, ethics, logic, and the philosophy of mind. He has an MA in Philosophy from Harvard University and a BA in Philosophy from Brigham Young University. Professor Hatch has served as Pedagogy Fellow, Writing Fellow, and Assistant Director of Undergraduate Studies at Harvard. He has also been a Visiting Scholar at the Nanjing University Institute in China for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences.

Professor Hatch is broadly interested in freedom and its place in ethics and political philosophy: In what does (or can) freedom consist, and to what is its relation to our rights and obligations? He takes Rousseau, Kant, and German Idealism as his guide to this subject. Much of his work consists of careful interpretations of the arguments in their often difficult texts.

Professor Chandler Hatch’s current research focuses on the claim (shared by Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel) that the only rightful authority over an individual is an individual's own will, and that therefore a rightful political community must be governed by the general will, a will which is the will of all of the citizens. His research traces the development of this idea from Rousseau to Hegel. 

• Political Philosophy
• Ethics
• Kant
• German Idealism
• Logic