| Post: | Lecturer in Philosophy |
| Other posts: | Lecturer in Philosophy (Cst) |
| Location: | Arts B B241 |
| Email: | A.E.Chitty@sussex.ac.uk |
| Telephone numbers | |
| Internal: | 8296 |
| UK: | (01273) 678296 |
| International: | +44 1273 678296 |
Biography
I studied for my BA in Developmental Psychology, and my MA in Philosophy, at Sussex. My DPhil in Philosophy at Oxford was on 'Needs in the Philosophy of History: Rousseau to Marx'. From 1990 to 1994 I taught Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London and at the University of Bristol. I have been teaching at Sussex since 1994.
I have taught courses in Hegel, Marx, Kant, social and political philosophy, history of political thought, and ethics in the BA and MA in Philosophy, and in the MA in Social and Political Thought. I supervise research students in the same areas.
I am a member of the University's Senate and Council, of the Executive Committee of the Aristotelian Society, and of the organising group of the Marx and Philosophy Society.
Some teaching materials
An introduction to Kant's political philosophy, via Rousseau
Singer's argument for animal equality [Word]
Online bibliographies
I maintain online bibliographies on:
Hegel
Marx
Social and political philosophy
Role
Lecturer in Philosophy
Research
Hegel, Marx, ethics, political philosophy.
See below for full list of publications, and links to full-text copies.
My main research interest for some time has been in the normative ground for the criticism of basic social and political institutions. I am interested both in the grounds that historical thinkers have adopted, and in how their ideas can be used to provide such a ground today.
I am mainly interested in two streams of thought: a modern 'political constructivist' current that starts from the idea of what it is to be a free or rational agent (e.g. Kant, Rawls, Gewirth, Habermas, Scanlon) and an older current that starts from the idea of humans as social or sociable animals (e.g. Aristotle, Aquinas).
I am especially interested in thinkers who seem to have attempted a synthesis of these two streams, such as Rousseau, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Marx. As I see it, each of these figures developed a variant of the idea that freedom and society are inseparable from each other, so that their ultimate ground for social and political criticism is some idea of 'free sociality' or 'social freedom'. The concepts of the 'general will' in Rousseau, 'mutual recognition' in Fichte, 'ethical life' in Hegel, and 'species-being' in Marx are all attempts to formulate such an idea, as is Jean-Luc Nancy's more recent notion of 'community'.
At the same time these concepts seem to suffer from some serious problems. First, there is a question about whether any of them really succeeds in integrating the ideas of freedom and sociality at a deep level, or whether instead they simply put the two ideas together under new labels, or redefine one in terms of the other. In addition, like all foundationalist ethical concepts, they look vulnerable to historicist, naturalist and deconstructive critiques.
Furthermore, each has problems of its own. For example, Fichte's concept of mutual recognition looks vitiated by the way it is bound up with an absolutist notion of individual freedom, Hegel's concept of ethical life by its reliance on the idea that those who participate in it are somehow 'all one', and Marx's concept of species-being by its exclusive focus on labour and production.
My research aims at investigating the strengths and weaknesses of these various conceptions of 'free sociality', with a view to asking whether an alternative formulation of the idea can overcome their problems.
Teaching
In Autumn Term 2009 I am teaching the following courses:
Figures in Social and Political Philosophy: Marx (BA in Philosophy)
Text and Critique in Social and Political Thought (MA in Social and Political Thought)
Theorizing the Social (MA in Social and Political Thought)
In Spring-Summer Terms 2010 I am teaching the following courses:
Society State and Humanity (BA in Philosophy)
Ethics (BA in Philosophy)
Hegel and Marx (MA in Social and Political Thought)
Ethics: Morality and Reason (MA in Philosophy)
Publications
Edited Collections
Has History Ended? Fukuyama, Marx, Modernity, eds Christopher Bertram and Andrew Chitty, Avebury Press, Aldershot, 1994, 182 pp.
'The Direction of Contemporary Capitalism', ed. Andrew Chitty, special issue of Review of International Political Economy, vol. 4 no. 3, 1997, 175 pp.
Karl Marx and Contemporary Philosophy, eds Andrew Chitty and Martin McIvor, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009
Articles
'The Early Marx on Needs', Radical Philosophy no. 64, May 1993, pp. 23-31, reprinted in Karl Marx's Social and Political Thought: Critical Assessments, eds. B. Jessop and R. Wheatley, Routledge, 1999
'Marx, Moral Consciousness and History', in Has History Ended? Fukuyama, Marx, Modernity, eds. Christopher Bertram and Andrew Chitty, Avebury Press, Aldershot 1994, pp. 112-132
'On Hegel, the Subject and Political Justification', Res Publica, vol. 2 no. 2, Autumn 1996, pp. 181-203
'First Person Plural Ontology and Praxis', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. 97 no.1, 1997, pp. 81-96
'The Direction of Contemporary Capitalism and the Practical Relevance of Theory', Review of International Political Economy, vol. 4 no. 3, Autumn 1997, pp. 435-447
'Recognition and Social Relations of Production', in Historical Materialism, no. 2, Summer 1998, pp. 57-97. A shortened version of this article appeared in The Hegel-Marx Connection, eds. Tony Burns and Ian Fraser, MacMillan, 2000, pp. 167-197
'Social and Physical Form: Ilyenkov on the Ideal and Marx on the Value-Form', in Evald Ilyenkov's Philosophy Revisited, ed. Vesa Oittinen, Kikimora Publications, Helsinki, 2000, pp. 229-261. A revised version of this article is to appear in Historical Materialism.
'The Basis of the State in the Marx of 1842', in The New Hegelians: Politics and Philosophy in the Hegelian School, ed. Douglas Moggach, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
'Species-Being and Capital', Social Sciences in Nanjing, 2, 2007, pp. 1-10, revised version in Karl Marx and Contemporary Philosophy, eds Andrew Chitty and Martin McIvor, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009
'Protagonist and subject in Gewirth's argument for human rights', Kings Law Journal, vol. 19 no. 1, 2008, pp. 1-26
Reviews and interviews
Review of Patrick Murray, Marx's Theory of Scientific Knowledge, Analysis (London), no. 1, Winter 1991-92, pp. 45-48
Interview with Francis Fukuyama, Analysis (London), no. 2, Summer 1992, pp. 25-27
Review of Frank Füredi, Mythical Past, Elusive Future, Analysis (London), no. 2, Summer 1992, pp. 33-38
'The Impasse of Analytical Marxism', review of Marcus Roberts, Analytical Marxism, Radical Philosophy no. 91, September/October 1998, pp. 37-40
Occasional pieces
'On Humanitarian Bombing', Radical Philosophy no. 96, July/August 1999, pp. 2-5
'Moralism, Terrorism and War', Radical Philosophy no. 111, January/February 2002, pp. 16-19