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Assist. Prof.

International Relations

Umur Başdaş

After having graduated from the German High School of Istanbul and Boğaziçi University, Umur Başdaş completed his Ph.D. at Yale University in the field of political philosophy and started working as an Assist. Prof. at Koç University. In his dissertation, he examined the evolution of the concept of “nature” in the Critical Theory tradition. Through aesthetic readings of Kant, Hegel, Fichte and Adorno, he criticized Habermas’s reduction of nature to a mute object. In his subsequent works, he focused on the intertwinement of being and beauty in Kant and on the relationship between logic and consciousness in Hegel. He currently continues to contemplate on the connection between aesthetics and ontology.

Publications

Umur Basdas (2023), “Nature as a concrete other: An alternative voice in Kant’s conception of beauty and dignity” in Another Universalism: Seyla Benhabib and The Future of Critical Theory, eds. Anna Jurkevics, Stefan Eich, Nishin Nathwani, and Nica Siegel (Columbia University Press).

Umur Basdas (2022), Review of Practical necessity, freedom, and history: From Hobbes to Marx by David James, in the journal of Contemporary Political Theory

Umur Basdas ( 2021), “Meta-Encyclopaedic Reflections on the Beginning of Philosophy” in Hegel Bulletin, vol. 42, issue 3, pp. 323-343.

Main sub-Fields: Political Theory

Research Interests:

Kant and German Idealism

Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School

Religion and Politics

Philosophy of Art

  • 2017

    Ph.D., Yale University

  • 2010

    BS, Boğaziçi University

Courses

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