Dr. James D. Hatley

Dr. James D. Hatley
Professor of Philosophy

Department of Philosophy
Fulton School of Liberal Arts
Salisbury University
Salisbury, Maryland 21801

Office: Philosophy House, 1st Floor

Telephone: 410-677-5072 Fax: 410-543-6068 Email: jdhatley@salisbury.edu

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 have been 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). Currently I am working with William Edelglass of Colby College and Christian Diehm of the University of Wisconsin at Steven’s Point to edit a volume of essays provisionally to be titled Faces of Nature: Levinasian Ethics and Environmental Philosophy.

I am on the executive committee for the International Association for Environmental Philosophy and serve on the steering committee for the Society for Philosophy, Religion and the Environment. I am also on the executive board for the North American Levinas Society.

Two scholarly research projects are currently occupying me: a) Rereading Paul Celan’s poetry in the context of the thought of Theodore Adorno and Abraham Heschel’s account of the Jewish tradition of biblical Midrash; 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. We now have a small organization dedicated to this project titled EGAD (Environmental Gardeners against Desolation). 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 have been invited by the Salisbury University art department faculty to exhibit my work as part of their annual exhibition at the Salisbury University Fulton Gallery.