Peter Dews (philosopher)

Peter Kenneth Dews (born 22 April 1952) is a British philosopher specialising in critical theory and continental philosophy, and an emeritus professor at the University of Essex.^[1]

His first degree was in English from Queens' College, Cambridge, followed by a master's in sociology of literature from the University of Essex.^[1] He has a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Southampton.^[2]

He taught philosophy at Middlesex University, and European philosophy and literature at Anglia Ruskin University, before joining the academic staff of the University of Essex. He was a Humboldt Fellow at the University of Tübingen.^[1]

Dews made his name with the Logics of Disintegration, on the limitations of post-structuralism.^[3] Dews's 2023 book on Schelling's Late Philosophy was the subject of a book symposium by Review for the Society of German Idealism and Romanticism, in which it received reviews from James Kreines, Philipp Schwab and Marcela García Romero.^[4]

He was dubbed "the UK's most sensitive Habermas-watcher" by journalist Pat Kane in 1993.^[5]

• Logics of Disintegration: Post-structuralist Thought and the Claims of Critical Theory. London: Verso. 1987. ISBN 978-0-86091-813-4.^[6][7]
• The Limits of Disenchantment: Essays on Contemporary European Philosophy. London: Verso. 1995. ISBN 978-1-85984-022-1.
• The Idea of Evil. Oxford: Blackwell. 2008. doi:10.1002/9780470691830. ISBN 978-1-4051-1704-3.
• Schelling's Late Philosophy in Confrontation with Hegel. New York: Oxford University Press. 2022. doi:10.1093/oso/9780190069124.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-006912-4.^[8][4]

• Habermas, Jürgen (1986). — (ed.). Autonomy and Solidarity: Interviews. London: Verso. ISBN 0860911322. (2nd edn. 1992, ISBN 0860913678)
• —; Critchley, Simon, eds. (1996). Deconstructive Subjectivities. State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0-7914-2724-8.
• —, ed. (1999). Habermas: A Critical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0631201343.

• "The 'New Philosophers' and the End of Leftism". Radical Philosophy. 24: 2–11. 1980. ISSN 0300-211X.
• "Hegel in Analysis: Slavoj Zizek's Lacanian Dialectics". Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain. 11 (1–2): 1–18. 1990. doi:10.1017/S0263523200004687.
• "Foucault and the French Tradition of Historical Epistemology". History of European Ideas. 14 (3): 347–363. 1992. doi:10.1016/0191-6599(92)90213-V.
• Ball, Terence; Bellamy, Richard, eds. (2006). "Postmodernism: Pathologies of Modernity from Nietzsche to the Post-structuralists". The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 343–367. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521563543.018. ISBN 9780521691628.
• Stolzenberg, Jürgen; Rudolph, Oliver-Pierre, eds. (2010). "Nature and Subjectivity: Fichte's Role in the Pippin/McDowell Debate in the Light of his Neo-Kantian Reception". Wissen, Freiheit, Geschichte. Die Philosophie Fichtes im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Amsterdam: Rodopi. pp. 235–250. doi:10.1163/9789042027596_012. ISBN 978-90-420-2758-9.
• Gane, Mike, ed. (2010). "The Nouvelle Philosophie and Foucault". Towards a Critique of Foucault: Foucault, Lacan and the Question of Ethics. London: Taylor & Francis. pp. 61–105. ISBN 9780415562089.
• "Nietzsche for Losers?". New Left Review. 86 (2): 209–230. 2014. doi:10.64590/isy.
• "Dialectics and the Transcendence of Dialectics: Adorno's Relation to Schelling". British Journal for the History of Philosophy. 22 (6): 1180–1207. 2014. doi:10.1080/09608788.2014.992857.
• Fink, Hans; Stern, Robert, eds. (2017). "The Configuration of the Ethical Demand in Løgstrup and Levinas". What is Ethically Demanded? K. E. Løgstrup's Philosophy of Moral Life. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press. pp. 102–129. doi:10.2307/j.ctvpj755r.9. ISBN 978-0-268-10185-5.
• Gordon, Peter E.; Hammer, Espen; Honneth, Axel, eds. (2018). "Schelling and the Frankfurt School". The Routledge Companion to the Frankfurt School. London: Routledge. pp. 394–409. ISBN 9781138333246.

• Peter Dews publications indexed by Google Scholar