Alice Crary

Alice Crary (/ˈkrɛəri/; born 1967) is an American philosopher who currently holds the positions of University Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Faculty, The New School for Social Research in New York City and Visiting Fellow at Regent's Park College, University of Oxford, U.K. (where she was Professor of Philosophy 2018–19).

Alice Crary
Alice Crary, Berlin, 2017
Born (1967-09-16) September 16, 1967[1]
Seattle, WA, USA
Alma materAB, Philosophy, Harvard University, 1990; PhD, Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, 1999[2]
EraContemporary philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
SchoolAnalytic
Main interests
Moral philosophy, philosophy and literature, epistemology, feminist philosophy, disability studies
Notable ideas
All human beings and animals are inside ethics

Education and career

Crary graduated from Harvard University in 1990 and earned her Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh in 1999.

She was the New School's Philosophy Department Chair 2014–2017 and founding Co-Chair of its Gender and Sexuality Studies program. For the academic year 2017–2018, she was a Member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. In the summer 2018 she was LFUI-Wittgenstein Guest Professor at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.

Crary was named one of the three "most inspirational" professors at The New School, above all for "path-breaking work...as Chair to bring about greater inclusiveness among populations traditionally under-represented in philosophy."[3]


Philosophical work

Crary's contributions to philosophy center on moral philosophy, feminism, and Wittgenstein scholarship. However, she has specifically written about such topics as cognitive disability,[4] critical theory,[5] propaganda,[6] nonhuman animal cognition,[7] and the philosophy of literature and narrative.[8] Her thought is especially influenced by Cora Diamond,[9] John McDowell, Stanley Cavell,[10] Hilary Putnam, bell hooks,[11] Kimberlé Crenshaw,[11] Charles W. Mills, and Peter Winch.

Ethics and moral philosophy

Crary's most recent book, Inside Ethics,[12] argues for an ethically non-neutral conception of reality that embraces the resources of literature and art to reorient our experiences of other human beings and animals. In her view, our ability to think through ethical problems in disability studies and animal studies in particular is stunted by a lack of moral imagination that is partly caused by a narrow understanding of rationality and partly by the poverty of philosophy severed from the affective responses derived from other areas in the humanities.[13] She offers a picture of objectivity that is within rather than outside of ethical thought and a Wittgensteinian account of how seeing aspects of the world supplements our moral objectivism.[14]

Her first monograph, Beyond Moral Judgment,[15] discusses why and lays out this program of how to broaden discussions of moral concepts and objectivity, illustrating in particular how literature and feminism help us to reframe our moral presuppositions.

Crary has with increasing frequency written about ethics in regard to cognitive disability and animal life.[16]

Feminism

Crary's work on feminism exemplifies her engagement with continental philosophy as a critique of standard views of objectivity in analytic philosophy that shy away from the radical, non-neutral methodology and political standpoint that distinguishes her objective moralism.[11] In her view, language in all of its forms invites us to both cognitively and ethically appreciate the lives of women in new ways that count as objective knowledge.[17] As is the case with her moral philosophy, her view of a feminist conception of objectivity is informed by her interpretation of Wittgenstein, who she understands as proposing a "wide" view of objectivity in which affective responses are not merely non-cognitive persuasive manipulations but also reveal real forms of suffering that give us a more objective understanding of the world.[18]

Wittgenstein

Crary is a leading figure of what is often called the "therapeutic"[19] or "resolute"[20] reading of Wittgenstein. In her influential, co-edited collection of essays of such readings, The New Wittgenstein, her own contribution argues against the standard use-theory readings of Wittgenstein that often render his thought as politically conservative and implausible.[21] Since then, she has cultivated a distinctive reading of Wittgenstein and contributed to numerous collections of Wittgenstein scholarship, including Emotions and Understanding[22] and interpretations of Wittgenstein's On Certainty.[23] Recently, she has argued that critical theory and Wittgensteinian ethical analysis can fruitfully work together toward the aim of liberating social thought.[5]

Public philosophy

Crary frequently participates in and organizes events for public discussion.[24][25][26] She also writes for and participates in discussions and debates for the public at large, such as a commemorative article about her former mentor Stanley Cavell in the New York Times (with Nancy Bauer and Sandra Laugier),[27] a BBC radio interview about the life and philosophy of Stanley Cavell (with Stephen Mulhall),[28] public debates on the treatment of animals and the cognitively disabled,[29] and an essay for The Stone in the New York Times on the "math wars" in American education (with Stephen Wilson).[30]


Bibliography

Books – monographs

Books – edited volumes

See also

References
  2. "Alice Crary - Professor of Philosophy". Newschool.edu. Retrieved 2017-09-01.
  3. Ryan Gustafson, quoted in McCall M. 10 of The Most Inspirational Professors at The New School. College Magazine, December 5, 2016. URL: https://www.collegemagazine.com/10-inspirational-professors-new-school/
  4. Cureton, Adam; Wasserman, David T, eds. (2018). The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Disability. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190622879.001.0001. ISBN 9780190622879.
  5. https://www.nordicwittgensteinreview.com/article/view/3493
  6. Crary, Alice (October 1, 2017). "Putnam and Propaganda". Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal.
  7. Crary, Alice (April 14, 2012). "Dogs and Concepts". Philosophy. 87 (2): 215–237. doi:10.1017/S0031819112000010.
  8. Crary, Alice (2012). "W.G. Sebald and the Ethics of Narrative". Constellations. 19 (3): 494–508. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8675.2012.00691.x.
  9. Press, The MIT. "Wittgenstein and the Moral Life". The MIT Press.
  10. "Reading Cavell: 1st Edition (Paperback) - Routledge".
  11. Crary, Alice. "Alice Crary: The methodological is political / Radical Philosophy".
  12. http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674967816
  13. http://socialresearchmatters.org/2071-2/?platform=hootsuite; https://blog.apaonline.org/2016/11/02/why-philosophy-needs-literature-interview-with-alice-crary/
  14. "Inside Ethics".
  15. http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674034617
  16. "11. J. M. Coetzee, Moral Thinker: Philosophical Perspectives on Literature". ResearchGate.
  17. Crary, Alice (August 24, 2015). "Feminist Thought and Rational Authority: Getting Things in Perspective". New Literary History. 46 (2): 287–308. doi:10.1353/nlh.2015.0010. S2CID 143046249.
  18. See "What Do Feminists Want in an Epistemology?," in Feminist Interpretations of Ludwig Wittgenstein, ed. Naomi Scheman and Peg O'Connor (University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania, 2002), pp. 112–113.
  19. Alice Crary, introduction to The New Wittgenstein, ed. Alice Crary and Rupert Read (New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 1.
  20. Silver Bronzo, "The Resolute Reading and Its Critics: An Introduction to the Literature," Wittgenstein-Studien 3 (2012), p. 46.
  21. "Alice Crary, Wittgenstein's philosophy in relation to political thought - PhilPapers".
  22. "Emotions and Understanding - Wittgensteinian Perspectives | Y. Gustafsson | Palgrave Macmillan" – via www.palgrave.com.
  23. "Readings of Wittgenstein's On Certainty | D. Moyal-Sharrock | Palgrave Macmillan".
  24. "Five Questions". Five Questions by Kieran Setiya.
  25. "3:16". 3:16.
  26. "Social Visibility". Social Visibility.
  27. "Opinion | Stanley Cavell and the American Contradiction".
  28. "BBC Radio 3 - Free Thinking, The Working Lunch and Food in History". BBC.
  29. https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/philosophy/can-trophy-hunting-ever-be-justified, https://uchv.princeton.edu/events/comparisons-between-cognitively-disabled-human-beings-and-non-human-animals-do-they-have-role, https://academyforteachers.org/master-class/animal-ethics/
  30. "The Faulty Logic of the 'Math Wars' - The New York Times".
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