Dr.
James D. Hatley
Professor of Philosophy
![RockMenSketchSmallSize[1]](welcome_files/image009.jpg) 
Tai Chi at
Salisbury University
JAPANESE
WINTERMESTER:
Environmental Sprituality in the Shinto and
Buddhist Shingon Traditions
Artworks, etc.
Program and Archive for GeoAesthetics
in the Anthropocene Conference (May, 2010)
“The Land makes us Human: Aboriginal
Voices of Recuperation in the Wake of Colonial Violence”
“Techne and Phusis: Wilderness and the Aesthetics of the Trace in
Andrew Goldsworhty
”
“Witnessing Trees: Current Work in Environmental Sculpture”
“Persecution and Expiation: A Talmudic Amplification of
the Enigma of Responsibility in Levinas”
“Affirming Wilderness?”— PHILOSOPHERS IN MONTANA
SYMPOSIUM
”WHAT WELCOMES THOUGHT”—The Philosophical Legacy of Henry
Bugbee
PROGRAM : THIRD MEETING OF CPJC
I specialize in 20th
Century Continental Philosophy, particularly in the thought of Emmanuel Levinas and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
My interest in these thinkers has led me to publish papers in the fields of
Ethics, Aesthetics, Environmental Philosophy, Jewish Studies and the
Philosophy of Literature. During my
graduate years, I was fortunate to be appointed a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Tübingen,
where I was introduced to the poetry of Paul Celan,
a survivor of the Holocaust. My first
book, Suffering Witness: The Quandary of
Responsibility after the Irreparable (SUNY Press, 2000), provides a Levinasian account of Celan's
poetry and the responsibility to witness the Holocaust that it elicits.
Because of my interest in the fostering of post-holocaust Jewish thought and
culture, I was active in the establishment of the Society for Continental Philosophy in a Jewish Context. My second book, Interrogating Ethics: Embodying the Good in Merleau-Ponty (Duquesne University
Press, 2006), a collection of essays by various authors, treats how Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the lived-body and its
flesh renews the significance of ethics (Review). A third book, of which I am a co-editor
along with William Edelglass of Marlboro College
and Christian Diehm of the University of Wisconsin
at Steven’s Point, is titled Facing
Nature: Levinasian Ethics and Environmental
Philosophy. It will appear in 2012
under the auspices of Duquesne University Press.
In January of
2011 I traveled to Japan with 9 students to walk the Kumano Kodo Pilgrimage Route, a World Heritage Site, in order to
study Shinto and Shingon Buddhist perspectives on
spirituality in the natural world.
I am a member of
the Extinction Studies Working Group (http://www.extinctionstudies.org), as
well as Kangaloon, a group of eco-humanists and
artists centered in Australia. I
served from 2006-2011 on the executive committee for the International Association for Environmental Philosophy.
I am currently on the executive board for the North American Levinas Society.
Two scholarly research projects are currently
occupying me: a) Reading the Bible philosophically and midrashically
in the context of the thought of Emmanuel Levinas,
Martin Buber and Abraham Heschel; b) Rethinking the
philosophical meaning of creation and creature through an account of gestate
witness derived from Merleau-Ponty. This latter project is evolving into a
book-length manuscript to be titled Walking
Mountains Thinking. This
manuscript also turns to the scriptures of Judaism, as well as those of Zen
Buddhism, and appeals to themes found in the writings of Henry David Thoreau
and Henry Bugbee.
My scholarly projects often are fueled by the
questions and interests of my students.
Currently I am working with philosophy and environmental studies
majors to design and care for an  “environmentally-aware
garden” in the back yard of the Philosophy House, as well as an organic
vegetable garden next to the Conflict Resolution Center. I have also engaged in research with a more
pedagogical emphasis that has led to my offering a course in the approaches
of different religious traditions to spiritual guidance. In another case, such research has lead to
my having taken part in an interdisciplinary course involving ecological,
economic and philosophical perspectives concerning temperate and tropical
forests. A paper I wrote and published
with Jill Caviglia-Harris on our work together
teaching the latter course recently was cited as “Highly Commended” by its
publisher.
In May of 2005, as part of the outcome of my last
sabbatical, the Atrium gallery of SU presented an exhibition of my work in
photography, ceramic sculpture and stone assemblages on the theme Earthly Vessels, Earthly Lights. In September of 2006, Ideograms: Tree Stone Air, an
exhibition of environmental sculptures, opened in the Garden Room of the
Honors House (Review). Since then my work has been featured in
three national exhibitions—two sponsored by the Adkins Arboretum near Easton (Review) and another by the Art
Institute and Gallery here in Salisbury. In the fall of 2008, I was invited by the
Salisbury University art department faculty to exhibit my work as part of
their annual exhibition at the Salisbury University Fulton Gallery. In 2010 I was invited to exhibit one of my
sculptures outdoors as part of the Adkins Arboretum biannual Environmental
Art Exhibition.
  
Complete
Curriculum Vitae
Syllabi for Classes
PHIL 300: Philosophy of the Arts
PHIL 309: Medieval Philosophy
PHIL 101 Intro (Fall—4 Credits)
PHIL 318 Environmental Responsibility
SENIOR SEMINAR: HENRY BUGBEE
AND HIS PRECURSORS
PHIL
450 Philosophical Concepts of Literature (4 Credits)
PHIL
450/Engl 368
Reading Scriptures: Philosophical Concepts of Literature
PHIL 313 American Philosophers of Nature
PHIL 310/HIST 490 Nature Wars
PHIL 310/HONR 311 Imagining the Earth: Cultural
Approaches to Nature
Stunted Rainbow
1st Place,
AI&G Annual Photography Exhibition (2003)
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