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Shannon Hoff

 
      
     
Shannon Hoff
PhD
Assistant Professor of Social and Political Philosophy
1-416-979-2331 ext. 232
www.icscanada.edu/faculty/shoff
   
 
     
"How are we to reconcile the act of justice that must always concern singularity, individuals, irreplaceable groups and lives, the other or myself as other, in a unique situation, with rule, norm, value, or the imperative of justice which necessarily have a general form…?"

— Jacques Derrida

Law, human rights, legal protection, equality, etc.— these are some of the terms we hear when people speak about justice. And rightly so, since by recognizing the authority of law and rights we both assert our own significance and recognize the significance of others. But law is only one ingredient of justice, and on its own is incapable of producing just personal, social, and political relationships. What law can never completely do justice to is, first, our singularity or uniqueness, and second, our status as belonging to communities that define us in certain ways.  
 
Over the last several years I have thought about the nature, necessity, and inadequacy of law with regard to justice. I've mostly used Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit as a springboard for talking about these issues, but I'm also interested in how others talk about the conflicting demand that justice respond with fairness through law and with love through forgiveness, and how this theme resonates also in religious and specifically Christian contexts. Working from this theme I have engaged with various issues, such as the limits of the liberal political framework; the significance of racial, gendered, and post-colonial identifications to human agency and responsibility; the connection between the undecidability of justice and the exercise of responsibility; and the significance of forgiveness to the restoration of viable social relations. 
 
My parallel interest, however, is to explore the nature of human individuality and action: the inadequacy of law is met on the other side by the inadequacy of the individual to carry it out. Human beings are not universal but singular creatures, and they act out of limited knowledge and perspectives. They bring their singularity to bear upon the laws and the traditions they would uphold, and in fact must risk doing so, if they are concerned about justice and about faithfulness. My interest in law and forgiveness thus leads me also to an interest in the possibility of loving, responsible, and just action in the face of others, one's personal and social communities, and one's tradition. These issues are discussed in my inaugural address, which can be read here.

Research

Foci

  • Hegel, Derrida, feminist philosophy, political philosophy
  • Justice, responsibility, forgiveness and law
  • Racial, gendered, and post-colonial accounts of identity, agency and responsibility
  • Accounts and critiques of liberal political philosophy

Teaching

Recent Syllabi

Feminist Social Thought
Deconstruction and Politics
Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit
Reformational Philosophy
The Self and Its Others: Identity, Difference and Responsibility
Ethics After Auschwitz: Adorno and Levinas
The Politics of Forgiveness

Many of the courses I teach at the Institute are devoted to topics that are alive in contemporary political discussions, such as forgiveness, law and liberalism, feminist politics, difference, and deconstruction, but they also treat significant figures from the history of philosophy. Deconstruction and Politics begins by discerning the central concerns of political philosophy as expressed in ancient and modern texts, explores the roots of deconstructive philosophy in Hegel and Marx, and studies Derrida’s work on law, rights, violence, justice, democracy, hospitality and philosophy, concluding the course by reading several philosophers whose work is animated by this deconstructive tradition. My course on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit explored the theme of Hegel’s phenomenology of identity—the dependence of identity on others, the experience of oneself as a self and as an other for others, the way in which coming to know oneself truly involves self-dispossession, and not self-possession. The Politics of Forgiveness explores the idea of forgiveness in Hegel, Arendt, Derrida, Ricoeur, and Jankélévitch—forgiveness not just as an ethical act, but as a social-ontological principle required by our fundamental separation as individuals from the good, the law, the others, and the communities about which we care. In Feminist Social Thought we study three topics: Simone de Beauvoir and her idea of an apprenticeship of freedom, the ethics and politics of care, and post-modern feminist criticisms and revaluations of law and legal protection. The Self and Its Others: Identity, Difference and Responsibilityexamines the construction of ethnic, racial, gendered, and post-colonial “difference,” exploring the notion that subjectivity is not merely given but produced through encounters with others, and thinking about what ethical and political responsibility might mean in this context. It begins by treating Kant, Hegel, and Levinas as each representative of one of the central principles by which justice and responsibility must be oriented—the autonomy of the self, the centrality of the community, and the indeterminate significance of the beyond. In Liberalism and Its Critics we explore various defences and critiques of liberal political theory, coming from communitarianism, philosophy of religion, critical theory, feminist philosophy, and post-structuralism. Body, Language, Power: The Question of the Human in 20th-Century French Philosophy treats significant accounts of the nature of human beings in 20th-century French continental philosophy. It begins by investigating the existential-phenomenological conceptions of human nature developed by Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and then takes up the development and transformation of this story in Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Michel Foucault, who oppose to the humanist model of the well-formed and autonomous individual the model of persons as dispersed into networks of language and power. The Rational Individual and the Social Contract: Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Marx explores the notion that society is based on a fundamental pact or a contract among autonomous individuals—a very old idea in political philosophy. The foundation of society in rational agreement has had an immeasurably significant impact on existing laws and political institutions; we look at the way this idea is developed and challenged by Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Marx. Person, Family and Society is a course designed for the MWS program, and reflects on the nature of the social world, aiming at the development of an existentially and philosophically rich Christian sensitivity to the complexity of the social relationships that shape us and make claims on us. Challenging the common view that individuals are fully independent and self-made realities, we will look at the different kinds of communities that define us, in restrictive, enabling and conflicting ways: family, political society, religious community, and groups formed on the basis of other kinds of shared identities. The course includes readings from diverse philosophical, religious, literary, and social-scientific texts.

I have also participated in three of ICS’ interdisciplinary seminars (IDS), Ethics After Auschwitz; Truth in Contemporary Thought; and Way, Truth and Life: (Re)Visioning of Truth from the PreSocratics to Hegel, which have involved most or all of the senior and junior members. The first explores the work of Adorno and Levinas, two philosophers whose ethical thought was shaped by their experience in Germany during the Nazi regime. Truth in Contemporary Thought works with contemporary approaches to truth developed by Lambert Zuidervaart (another senior member at ICS), Heidegger, Horkheimer, Nietzsche, Foucault, and American Pragmatism, while the topic of Way, Truth and Life is truth as it has been conceived of and discussed in the history of philosophy. I have also taught and co-taught one of ICS’ required courses, Religion, Life and Society: Reformational Philosophy, on the work of first- and second-generation Reformational philosophers and of figures in mainstream analytic and continental philosophy.

Publications

Articles

  • "Restoring Antigone to Ethical Life: Nature and Sexual Difference in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit," in The Owl of Minerva
  • "Confession, Forgiveness, Solidarity: Hegel's Theory of Law in the Phenomenology of Spirit," in Philosophy Today
  • "Law, Love, and Life: Forgiveness and the Transformation of Politics," forthcoming in Philosophy Today
  • "Of False Promise and Fickle Purpose: The Predicament of Rights and Persons," forthcoming in Spirit and Method in Hegel's Phenomenology (edited by John Russon and Shannon Hoff)

Presentations

  • "Law, Love, and Life: Forgiveness and the Transformation of Politics," at the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy Conference (George Mason University, October 2009)
  • "The Colonization of Significance and the Future of Identity: Fanon, Derrida, and Democracy-to-Come," at the Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy Conference (University of Western Ontario, October 2009)
  • "The Colonization of Significance and the Future of Identity: Fanon, Derrida, and Democracy-to-Come," at the Philosophia Conference (Fordham University, June 2009)
  • "Augustine's Hermeneutics: Biblical Rhetoric in the Confessions," at The Psychology of Conversion in St. Paul and St. Augustine Conference (Toronto, June 2009)
  • "The Ethics and Politics of Conscience," Inaugural Address (Institute for Christian Studies, May 2009)
  • "The Ideal Nation and the Real Nation: Revolution, Institution, and World-Building Reason," at the Ontario Hegel Society Conference (Institute for Christian Studies, March 2009)
  • "Violence and Democracy in Derrida's Rogues," at the Derrida's Rogues: Democracy and Deconstruction Conference (Toronto, October 2008)
  • "Law, Love, and Life: Forgiveness and the Transformation of Politics," at the Canadian Society for Women in Philosophy Conference (University of Windsor, October 2008)
  • "Crime, Punishment, and the Question of Authority in Hegel's Philosophy of Right," Distinguished Alumni Lecture (Stony Brook University, New York, March 2008)
  • "Criminal Action: The Problem of Punishment in Hegel's Philosophy of Right," at the Ontario Hegel Society Conference (Ryerson University, Toronto, March 2008)
  • "The Trouble with Justice… Hegel's Critique of Rights and Recognition," at the Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy Conference (McMaster University, October 2007)
  • "Confession, Forgiveness, Solidarity: Hegel's Theory of Law in the Phenomenology of Spirit," at the Eastern Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association (Washington D.C., December 2006)
  • "Negotiating the Law: The Remains of Antigone in the Phenomenology of Spirit," at the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy Conference (University of Utah, October 2005)
  • "Law in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit," at "Hegelian Politics of Gender: Spirit, Nature, Law" (Jyväskylä, Finland, December 2003)
  • "Politicizing the Abstract Individual: Power, Authority, and the Role of Law," at the International Women's Day Conference (New School University, New York, April 2003)
     

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