Jan-Ivar Lindén   Thematic Areas of Interest in Philosophy and History Ontology, epistemology and philosophy of language, phenomenology, philosophical hermeneutics, philosophy of nature, philosophical anthropology and zoology, ethics, aesthetics and philosophical psychology, cultural history, art history, history of ideas…

Historical Areas of Interest

- in ancient philosophy the focus has been on Aristotle and on the peculiar form of Platonism that one finds in the works of Augustine
- in medieval tradition I have been working on Aristotelians in general and Aquinas in particular
- the investigations above are linked to a general interest in early modern philosophy: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Berkeley and Locke
- another interest concerns the radicalization of Lockean empiricism in French 18th century psychological tradition (Condillac and the “ideologists” Cabanis and Destutt de Tracy) and the reaction against these currents of thought: Maine de Biran and later in the Aristotelian renaissance represented by Ravaisson.
- in this context it has been interesting to rediscover the naturalist philosophy of late 19th and early 20th century. The naturalization of the subject found in the works of Ernst Mach, William James and Henri Bergson appears in a new way when regarded in a larger historical perspective. It becomes evident, that the concept of nature is extremely complex and that naturalism can have highly different significations. In this vein I have also been working on Jacob von Uexküll and other biologists
- further Kant and German idealism, especially Hegel and Schelling
- Husserl, Heidegger, Scheler, Buber, Simmel, Arendt, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Wittgenstein…
- cultural history, art history and aesthetics in Yrjö Hirn and Lars-Ivar Ringbom
- I have also been co-editor of the Works of Johan Vilhelm Snellman