Katharina Kraus

Katharina Kraus

Miller Associate Professor of Philosophy

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Research Interests: philosophy of Enlightenment, 19th and 20th century German philosophy, as well as contemporary analytic philosophy of mind, science, and language

Education: PhD, University of Cambridge

Philosophy > Katharina Kraus

Katharina Kraus is Miller Associate Professor of Philosophy, as well as associated faculty of the German Program in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures. Before moving to Hopkins in January 2023, she taught for six years at the University of Notre Dame, where she also served as a member of the steering committee of the newly established History of Philosophy Forum. Before that, she taught at the University College Freiburg of the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg and was a post-doctoral fellow of the Martin Buber Society at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

After her studies of physics, mathematics, and philosophy, she received a Diplom in physics (including a BA and MA equivalent) from the Ruprecht-Karls-University of Heidelberg in 2008, a MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science in 2010 and a PhD in philosophy in 2014, both from the University of Cambridge.

Kraus is the author of Kant on Self-Knowledge and Self-Formation (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and numerous articles on Kant’s theoretical philosophy. She is currently working on a short monograph on Kant’s Ideas of Reason (Cambridge Elements Series).

In her new research project, The Life of the Mind, she examines theories of mental development and personal growth in the German tradition of transcendental philosophy that model the mind on a conception of life and place particular emphasis on mental or spiritual life (“geistiges Leben”). This project has been funded by the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

More recently, she has developed a strong interest in the work of women philosophers of the German tradition in the long nineteenth century and studies in particular Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861–1937) and Edith Stein (1891–1942).

Her systematic research interests include topics such as self-consciousness, the first-person perspective, personal identity, and self-constitution, as well as analytic theories of expressivism, contextualism, and perspectivalism.

MONOGRAPHS

  1. Kant on Self-Knowledge and Self-Formation: The Nature of Inner Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Reviews and Comments:

  • European Journal of Philosophy 29: 679–682 (2021), Patricia Kitcher.
  • Journal of the History of Philosophy 60(3): 515-517 (2022), Stefanie Buchenau.
  • The Philosophical Review 131 (3): 365–369 (2022), Béatrice Longuenesse.
  • Kant-Studien 114 (2):388–395 (2023), Ekin Erkan.
  • Notre Dame Philosophical Review (2023), Pirachula Chulanon (https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/kant-on-self-knowledge-and-self-formation-the-nature-of-inner-experience/).
  • Kantian Review 27(3): 461–508 (2022), Comments by Patrick Frierson, Janum Sethi, Clinton Tolley, and Allen Wood and author’s replies.
  • The Journal of the Society of German Idealism and Romanticism 5(1): 1–41 (2023), Comments by Karin Nisenbaum and Julia Peters and author’s replies.

EDITED VOLUMES

  1. Kant’s Philosophy of Science. Bridging the Gap between the Natural and the Human Sciences. Special Issue of Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 71 (2018): 1-98 (edited with Silvia De Bianchi).

ARTICLES IN PEER-REVIEWED JOURNALS

  1. “Précis of Kant on Self-Knowledge and Self-Formation” and “Replies to Critics”. In Kantian Review 27(3): 491-508 (2022) (with comments by Patrick Frierson, Janum Sethi, Clinton Tolley, and Allen Wood).
  2. “Précis of Kant on Self-Knowledge and Self-Formation” and “Replies to Critics”. In The Journal of the Society of German Idealism and Romanticism 5(1): 21–41 (2023) (with comments by Karin Nisenbaum and Julia Peters).
  3. “An Expressivist Interpretation of Kant’s ‘I think’”. Noûs 56(1): 110-132 (2022) (with Wolfgang Freitag).
  4. “Rethinking the Relationship between Empirical Psychology and Transcendental Philosophy in Kant”. International Yearbook of German Idealism 15 (2019): 47-76.
  5. “The Parity and Disparity between Inner and Outer Experience in Kant”. Kantian Review 24, no. 2 (2019): 171-195.
  6. “The Soul as the ‘Guiding Idea’ of Psychology: Kant on Scientific Psychology, Systematicity, and the Idea of the Soul”. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 71 (2018): 77-88.
  7. “Quantifying Inner Experience? – Kant’s Mathematical Principles in the Context of Empirical Psychology”. European Journal of Philosophy 24, no. 2 (2016): 331-357.

BOOK CHAPTERS AND PROCEEDINGS

  1. “The Perspectival Nature of Consciousness in German Idealism and Analytic Philosophy”. In The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Analytic Philosophy, edited by James Conant and Jonas Held. London: Palgrave (forthcoming).
  2. “Spinoza as the ‘Philosopher of Psychoanalysis’: On the Spinozistic Elements in the Philosophy of Lou Andreas-Salomé”. In Spinoza in Germany: Political and Religious Thought across the Long Nineteenth Century, edited by Jason M. Yonover and Kristin Gjesdal. Oxford: Oxford University Press (forthcoming).
  3. “Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861 – 1937)”. In The Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century Women Philosophers in the German Tradition, edited by Kristin Gjesdal and Dalia Nassar. Oxford: Oxford University Press (forthcoming).
  4. “Contemporary Kantian Philosophy of Science”. In The Kantian Mind, edited by Sorin Baiasu and Mark Timmons, 568-580. London: Routledge, 2023.
  5. “Wie erfahren wir uns selbst sinnlich? – Ein Lösungsvorschlag zu Kants Paradox der Selbstaffektion”. In Kant’s Transcendental Deduction and the Theory of Apperception: New Interpretations (Kant-Studien Ergänzungshefte), edited by Giuseppe Motta, Dennis Schulting, and Udo Thiel, 613-640. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2022.
  6. “The Puzzle of the Empirical Self and the Regulative Principles of Reason”. In Proceedings of the XIII. International Kant-Congress: The Court of Reason, edited by Camilla Serck-Hanssen and Beatrix Himmelmann, 1149-1158. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2022.
  7. “Kant’s Argument Against Psychological Materialism in the Prolegomena”. In The Critical Guide to Kant’s Prolegomena, edited by Peter Thielke, 154-174. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
  8. “Innere Erfahrung und ‘ich’ als Objekt”. In Proceedings of the XII. International Kant-Congress: Nature and Freedom, edited by Violetta Waibel and Margit Ruffing, 2719-2727. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018.
  9. “Kants Zwei Standpunkte und die Möglichkeit der Naturerkenntnis”. In Die Natur denken: Studien zur Naturphilosophie, edited by Myriam Gerhard and Christine Zunke, 141-167. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2013.

LEXIKON ENTRIES AND SMALLER PIECES

  1. “Introduction to Kant’s Philosophy of Science. Bridging the Gap between the Natural and the Human Sciences”. Special Issue of Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 71 (2018): 1-5 (with Silvia De Bianchi).
  2. “Tierheit”. In Kant-Lexikon, edited by Georg Mohr, Jürgen Stolzenberg, and Marcus Willaschek, 2332–2333. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2015.
  3. “Über den Gebrauch teleologischer Prinzipien in der Philosophie”. In Kant-Lexikon, edited by Georg Mohr, Jürgen Stolzenberg, and Marcus Willaschek, 2395-2396. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2015.

REVIEW ARTICLES AND BOOK REVIEWS

  1. “The Nature of Human Reason: Willaschek on Kant on the Rational Sources of Metaphysics”. Studi Kantiani 33 (2020): 127-139 (Review article).
  2. Review of Daniel Wehinger, Das präreflexive Selbst. Subjektivität als minimales Selbstbewusstsein (Paderborn: mentis 2016). Philosophisches Jahrbuch 126, no. 1 (2020): 171-174.
  3. “‘An Attractive Alternative to Empirical Psychologies Both in His Day and Our Own’? A Critique of Frierson’s Kant’s Empirical Psychology”. Studi Kantiani 30 (2017): 203-223. (Review article, with Thomas Sturm)
  4. “Kant and the ‘Soft Sciences’”. Essay Review of Thomas Sturm, Kant und die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (Paderborn: mentis, 2009). Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 42 (2011): 618-624.

WORK IN PROGRESS

MONOGRAPHS

  1. Kant’s Ideas of Reason. Elements in the Philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  2. The Life of the Mind. A Theory of Personal Development in Modern Thought.

COMISSIONED BOOK CHAPTERS

  1. “Kant’s Transcendental Philosophy and the Metaphysical Foundations of Psychology”. In The Palgrave Handbook of Transcendental and Psychological Idealism, edited by Faustino Fabbianelli and Andrea Staiti. London: Palgrave.