Brandon C. Look
University Research Professor
and Chair
Department of Philosophy
University of Kentucky
1415 Patterson Office Tower
Lexington, KY 40506-0027
Tel: 859-257-1862
E-mail: look@uky.edu
(I have stopped mainting this website. For current information please go here.)
My research focuses on the history of modern philosophy, especially on the metaphysics, epistemology and natural philosophy of Leibniz and Kant. Work on Leibniz has resulted in three books: Leibniz and 'Vinculum Substantiale', The Leibniz-Des Bosses Correspondence, a critical edition and translation (with Donald Rutherford), and The Continuum Companion to Leibniz. At the moment, I am engaged in a larger project, examining Kant's Auseinandersetzung with the philosophy of Leibniz and the Leibnizian tradition. I am editing a collection of essays on this subject, Leibniz and Kant, which is under contract with Oxford University Press, and I am writing a monograph, Leibniz, Kant and the Possibility of Metaphysics, which details Kant's critical reaction to Leibniz's philosophy. In addition, I am co-editing (with Fred Beiser) the Oxford Handbook to Eighteenth-Century German Philosophy. I am also working on (and have taught graduate seminars on) a constellation of issues in contemporary metaphysics that have evident early modern roots: the nature of substance (or the nature of material constitution), the metaphysics of modality, the nature of causation, and the a priori. I also have active interests in the history and philosophy of science, contemporary epistemology, ancient and medieval philosophy, and logic.
In addition to teaching at the University of Kentucky, I have also taught courses at the University of Chicago and the Universität Bielefeld.
My work has been supported by the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship Program, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and the Alexander-von-Humboldt-Stiftung. For the 2011-12 academic year, I was in Princeton as the Hans Kohn Member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study. And for the 2012-13 academic, I was awarded a research fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
I was the recipient of the College of Arts & Sciences' Outstanding Teaching Award for 2006-07. In Spring 2011 I was named University Research Professor. I now serve as Chair of the Department of Philosophy.
Some of the courses that I have taught.
Honors 101: The Ancient World
Honors 102: The Medieval and Renaissance World
Honors 201: The Early Modern World
Honors 202: The Contemporary World
Philosophy 100: Introduction to Philosophy: Knowledge and Reality
Philosophy 120: Introductory Logic
Philosophy 251: Philosophy and Classical Physics
Philosophy 260: History of Philosophy I: Ancient and Medieval Philosophy
Philosophy 270: History of Philosophy II: Modern Philosophy
Philosophy 509: Topics in Modern Philosophy: Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz
Philosophy 509: Topics in Modern Philosophy: Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Reid
Philosophy 509: Topics in Modern Philosophy: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Philosophy 520: Symbolic Logic II
Philosophy 550: Philosophical Problems of Knowledge and Reality
Philosophy 560: Philosophy of Science
Philosophy 650: Seminar on Metaphysics and Epistemology: The Metaphysics of Modality
Philosophy 650: Seminar on Metaphysics and Epistemology: The Metaphysics of Material Beings: Constitution, Persistence, and Identity
Philosophy 680: Seminar on Metaphysics and Epistemology: Causation
Philosophy 710: Seminar on Modern Philosophy: The Philosophy of Leibniz
Philosophy 710: Seminar on Modern Philosophy: The Philosophy of Spinoza
Philosophy 710: Seminar on Modern Philosophy: Kant: Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science
Philosophy 710: Seminar on Modern Philosophy: From Leibniz to Kant, or Becoming Immanuel Kant
University of Kentucky Department of Philosophy