Prior to joining the New College faculty, Jeffrey Hanson spent eight years as the inaugural Senior Philosopher at Harvard University’s Human Flourishing Program. Previously he was a research fellow in philosophy at Australian Catholic University in Melbourne and an adjunct assistant professor of philosophy at Boston College. Dr. Hanson’s research focuses on issues in philosophy of religion, phenomenology, aesthetics, and ethics. He has published extensively on the thought of Søren Kierkegaard, and his contributions to scholarship on Michel Henry are among the first substantial such efforts in the English language. He has also written on meaning in life and the philosophy of labor as well as developed philosophically informed survey instruments on meaningfulness and love designed for empirical social science research.
Education
PhD, Fordham University
BA, University of Dallas
Recent Courses
Religious Existentialism
Meaning in Life
Modern Philosophy
Introduction to Ethics
Publications
Books
Philosophies of Work in the Platonic Tradition: A History of Labor and Human Flourishing
Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death: A Critical Guide, co-edited with Sharon Krishek
Kierkegaardian Phenomenologies, co-edited with J. Aaron Simmons and Wojciech Kaftanski
Kierkegaard as Phenomenologist: An Experiment
Michel Henry’s Practical Philosophy, co-edited with Brian Harding and Michael R. Kelly
Michel Henry: The Affects of Thought, co-edited with Michael R. Kelly
Articles
“Thomas Aquinas and the Qualification of Monastic Labor”
“Measuring Meaning in Life by Combining Philosophical and Psychological Distinctions: Psychometric Properties of the Comprehensive Measure of Meaning”, co-authored with R. Noah Padgett, Julia Sharon Nakamura, James L. Ritchie-Dunham, Eric S. Kim, and Tyler J. VanderWeele
“The Comprehensive Measure of Meaning: Philosophical and Psychological Foundations” with Tyler J. VanderWeele
“Suffering, Authenticity, and Meaning in Life: Toward an Integrated Conceptualization of Well-Being”, co-authored with Wojciech Kaftanski
“The Oneness of Love in Works of Love”
“The Architecture of Happiness”, co-authored with Tim Lomas, Meike Bartels, Margot Van De Weijer, Michael Pluess, and Tyler J. VanderWeele
“Despair as a Threat to Meaning: Kierkegaard’s Challenge to Objectivist Theories”