Murray Littlejohn
Dr. Littlejohn received a BA and MA from l’Université d’Ottawa, a B.Th. from l’Université Saint-Paul, and a PhD from Boston College. He is an Invited Researcher at Sorbonne Université where he is working on recent developments in French philosophy. He lectures in logic, ethics, and the history of philosophy, with a particular focus in Late Antiquity, Early Medieval Philosophy, and Contemporary Philosophy.
Dr. Littlejohn’s research and teaching in Contemporary Philosophy run along the ‘tear’ or the divide of the two traditions, drawing from thinkers on the Analytic side, most notably Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, Stanley Cavell, Hilary Putnam and Stephen Mulhall, and thinkers on the Continental side, such as Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Louis Chrétien, Jean-Yves Lacoste and Claude Romano. His work on the philosophy of Richard Kearney resulted in the 2020 volume, Imagination Now: A Richard Kearney Reader, published by Rowman & Littlefield International.
Dr. Littlejohn teaches a number of courses in Philosophy, including Philosophy and Film with a focus on Stanley Cavell; Philosophy of Language; Philosophy of Mind; Philosophy of Religion, particularly in light of recent developments in French phenomenology and hermeneutics; and courses in the history of philosophy, especially focusing on Plato, Plotinus, and St. Augustine.
Dr. Littlejohn also has interests in the philosophy of psychology; the philosophical foundations of neuroscience; and psychiatry and mental health ethics, an area in which he has been invited to present at international conferences.
His current research focuses on the nexus of questions surrounding the problem of the self and persons as well as the influence of the thought of Saint Augustine on Contemporary Philosophy.
Edited books and journals
“Phenomenology and The Question of God Forty Years Later,” Book Symposium Journal For the Continental Philosophy of Religion 2:2, Fall 2020
Imagination Now: A Richard Kearney Reader, Rowman & Littlefield International, 2020.
Thinking Film: Philosophy at the Movies, (forthcoming) Bloomsbury, 2021.
Conferences organized
Thinking the Self along the Tear of Traditions. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. March 11, 2020.
Approches du soi à la croisée des traditions. University of Chicago Center, Paris, France. February 9, 2019.
Invited lectures, talks and publications
“1968: Culture, Music and Revolution in the Air,” presented at Boston College, September 27, 2018.
“Sacred Songsters: Anatheist Themes in Dylan, Beatles, Cohen, and U2,” in The Art of Anatheism, ed. Richard Kearney and Matthew Clemente, Rowman and Littlefield, London, UK, 2017, pp. 143 – 162.
« L’histoires, l’hostilité, et l’hospitalité: le ‘Guestbook Project,’ » presented at the Villes de Paix: Des histoires qui font l’Histoire, Beauvais, France, September 16 - 18, 2016.
“The Rupture of Traditions: Analytic and Continental Philosophy: Part 1,” Invited Lecture, Boston College: January 19, 2016.
“The Rupture of Traditions: Analytic and Continental Philosophy: Part 2,” Invited Lecture, Boston College: January 20, 2016.
“Stanley Cavell on Philosophy and Film,” Invited Lecture, Boston College: January 19, 2016.
“‘Moral Perfectionism’: Wittgenstein, Cavell, and Mulhall,” presented at conference in honor of Oxford philosopher Stephen Muhall: Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Muhall at the Institut Catholique de Paris (ICP), Nov. 5-6, 2015.
“Richard Kearney on Narrative and Ethics,” introductory remarks, Continental Philosophy and Ethics Conference, Boston College, October 3 - 4, 2014.
Invited talks in psychiatry, ethics and mental health
“Emotivism and the Danger of Words,” presented at Conference on Ethics in Mental Health, Hosted by the “Journal of Ethics in Mental Health” in association with McMaster University (Hamilton), University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia), and The Scattergood Program for the Applied Ethics of Behavioural Health, Cobourg, Ontario, Canada, June 11 – 13, 2015
“Mysticism, Madness and Ideology: Respecting Religion in a Secular Age,” Presented at the Conference on Ethics in Mental Health, Hosted by the “Journal of Ethics in Mental Health,” in association with McMaster University (Hamilton) & The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (Toronto), Lakefield, ON, October 2008.
“Theory, Therapy and Description,” Presented at the Conference on Ethics in Mental Health, Hosted by the “Journal of Ethics in Mental Health”, in association with McMaster University (Hamilton) & The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (Toronto), Lakefield, ON, July 2007.
“Ethics and the Unsayable,” Presented at the Conference on Ethics in Mental Health, Hosted by the “Journal of Ethics in Mental Health”, in association with McMaster University (Hamilton) & The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (Toronto), Lakefield, ON, July 2007.
Other recent conference papers
« Le soi confessionnel de Wittgenstein » / “Wittgenstein’s Confessional Self,” Approches du soi à la croisée des traditions, University of Chicago Center, Paris, February 9, 2019.
“Seeing the Form: A Hermeneutical Retrieval of St. Augustine’s Confessions,” presented at the Challenge of God Conference, Loyola University Chicago, April 14 - 16, 2016.
