Arata Hamawaki

Education

PhD, Harvard University

About Me

Arata Hamawaki develops and explores the implications of the idea that judgment is a free act of mind. He does so in three different areas: epistemology - in particular, skepticism; perception and objective representation – interpersonal relations; and aesthetics. He takes his point of orientation from Kant, and so consequently much of his work is either chiefly about Kant or draws its inspiration from him. He is also interested in German idealism, early modern philosophy, and Wittgenstein. Currently, he is working on papers on the autonomy of judgment, on the nature of first and second person forms of thought and language, and on the exemplary character of aesthetic judgment. Among his papers are “Kant on Beauty and the Normative Force of Feeling” in Philosophical Topics, v. 34, n. 1-2, 2006; “Teaching and Learning in Philosophical Investigations”, Jolley, ed., Key Concepts: Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, Acumen, 2009; “Cavell, Skepticism and the Idea of Philosophical Criticism” (forthcoming in Conant and Kern, eds., Skepticism in Context); "Transcendental Argument, Rational Necessity, and the Activity of Judgment" (forthcoming); “In Search of the Plain and the Philosophical: Skepticism, Transcendence and Self-Knowledge” (ms); “The Autonomy of Judgment” (ms); “Stanley Cavell on the Condition of Modernism: External World, Other Minds, Art”(ms).

Areas of Expertise

Kant

Research Interests

epistemology, aesthetics, perception, German idealism, early modern philosophy