The diverse strands of my writing, research, and teaching can be gathered together under the general heading of continental philosophy. But more specifically, my initial work as a philosopher emerged from my passion for exploring the ethical, aesthetic, and socio-political nexus of such modern German and Jewish philosophers as Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, Benjamin, Arendt, and Rosenzweig. This led me more deeply into how phenomenology can be used to better explore ethical relations and human rights issues such as the Holocaust. Out of my initial fascination with the dialectical philosophy of Hegel, I became deeply influenced by Rosenzweig's philosophy and am currently involved in the growth and developments of the International Rosenzweig Society. In 2007, I became keenly interested in the interrelation of ethics, science, and technology and helped to found and then have served as the Scientific Director of the Center for Science, Technology, Ethics, and Policy (CSTEP). I founded CSTEP on the principles of a praxis that I had thought was a novel ethical approach--'phenomenological ethics'--only to find out that the term had already been coined by Werner Marx in his 1992 book, "Towards a Phenomenological Ethics". I continue developing this novel approach in the several domains of philosophy in which I am active.
Articles
Motivation in Spinoza and Rosenzweig or Transgressing the Boundaries of a Rationally Constructed Self, Veritas (2009)
Hegels Familienbegriff – vermittelt durch Rosenzweig: Darstellung einer eigentuemlichen Geschichte, Rosenzweig Jahrbuch/Yearbook (2006)
Books
The Double Binds of Ethics after the Holocaust: Salvaging the Fragments (with john roth and jennifer geddes) (2009)
with John Roth and Jennifer Geddes; nominated for the National Jewish Book Award for non-fiction...
Contributions to Books
What about the children? Benjamin and Arendt: on education, work, and the political, Teaching Global Community (2010)
This article is a rough draft of an article that I contributed to an edited...