Eric Watkins

 
 

Academic History and Interests

I have been a professor in the Philosophy Department at UCSD since 2001 (after receiving  my PhD from Notre Dame in 1994 and then teaching at Virginia Tech and at Yale). My primary area of research is Kant (pre-Critical period, M&E, philosophy of science, and practical philosophy). I also have significant interests in early modern philosophy (Leibniz, Newton, and Hume) and German Idealism (Reinhold, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel) as well as in the history of philosophy of science.

Recent Courses:

  1. •Humanities 4 Enlightenment, Romanticism, Revolution

  2. •Phil 106 Kant

  3. •Phil 107 Hegel

  4. •Phil 112: History of Philosophy: Late Modern

  5. •Phil 185 Philosophy of Religion

  6. •Phil 181 Existentialism

  7. •Phil 201A Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit

  8. •Phil 285 Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason

Recent Publications (Selected):

  1. • “Kant’s Theory of Physical Influx,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 77 (1995): 285-324.

  2. • Kant and the Sciences (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) xii + 291 p.

  3. • “Autonomy in and after Kant,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 69 (2004): 727-740.

  4. • Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005) xiv + 451 p.

  5. • “On the Necessity and Nature of Simples: Leibniz, Wolff, Baumgarten, and the pre-Critical Kant,” Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy 3 (2006): 261-314.

  6. • “ Kant and the Myth of the Given,” Inquiry 51 (2008): 512-531.

  7. • Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: Background Source Materials (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009) xii + 410 p.

  8. • “Kant on the Hiddenness of God,” Kantian Review 14 (2009): 81-122.

  9. •“Kraft und Gesetz: Hegels Kant-Kritik im Kapitel ‘Kraft und Verstand’ der Phänomenologie des Geistes” in International Yearbook for German Idealism / Internationales Jahrbuch für Deutschen Idealismus (2012): 228-250.

Grants and Awards (Selected):

  1. •Fulbright (1992-3)

  2. •National Endowment for the Humanities (1996-7, 2001-2)

  3. •National Science Foundation (2002-3)

  4. •Humboldt Foundation (2004-2007)

  5. •Journal of the History of Philosophy Book Prize (2005)

  6. •Senate Distinguished Teaching Award (2009-10)

  7. •Templeton Foundation (2009-13) (Co-PI with Nancy Cartwright, UCSD & LSE)