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2007-2008 Fellows

Benjamin Lazier

Reed College
History Department

Benjamin Lazier is Assistant Professor of History and Humanities at Reed College, where he teaches in the fields of European intellectual history, the history of religion, the history of social action movements, and the history of technology. He is also the author of a book, Redemption Through Sin: Judaism and Heresy in Twentieth-Century Thought (forthcoming, Princeton UP).

http://academic.reed.edu/history/faculty/lazier/index.html

 

Project Summary

European thought of the twentieth century has taken as one of its prevailing themes the modern reign of the artifactual over the natural. My project focuses on one of the more curious reactions to this displacement of the grown by the made: the revival of teleology, the idea that natural organisms are endowed with will, autonomy and purpose. In jurisprudence, philosophy, political theory and bioethics, I aim to demonstrate how we have reimagined natural objects available for human manipulation as subjects, as agents that make claims upon human action.