David Bakhurst

Education

• BA (hons), Keele University
• British Council Visiting Student, Moscow State University
• DPhil, University of Oxford

Specializations / Research Interests 

Epistemology, Metaphysics, Ethics, Russian Philosophy, Philosophy of Education

Personal Website

About

David Bakhurst is George Whalley Distinguished University Professor and John and Ella G. Charlton Professor of Philosophy at Queen’s University, Ontario.  His book, Consciousness and Revolution in Soviet Philosophy (Cambridge, 1991), represents the first critical history of Soviet philosophical culture. The primary research was conducted in Moscow under the mentorship of Felix Mikhailov. Since then, in addition to continuing his work on Russian thought, Bakhurst has written on epistemology, metaphysics, Wittgenstein, ethics and philosophy of education. Recent publications include The Formation of Reason (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) and the edited collection, Teaching and Learning: Epistemic, Metaphysical and Ethical Dimensions (2020), which appeared as a special issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education. He has held visiting positions at All Souls College, Oxford; Exeter College, Oxford; UCL Institute of Education; the Australian National University. He is presently a participant in an international research project on the philosophy of Kant, based at the Akademia Kantiana of the Baltic Federal University in Kaliningrad. Bakhurst is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. 

Monographs

• The Formation of Reason (Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell, 2011)
• Consciousness and Revolution in Soviet Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 1991)

Edited Books / Collections

• (with Paul Fairfield) Education and Conversation: Exploring Oakeshott’s Legacy. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.
• (with B. Hooker and M. Little) Thinking about Reasons: Themes from the Philosophy of Jonathan Dancy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
• (with S. Shanker) Jerome Bruner: Language, Culture, Self. London: Sage, 2001.
• (with C. Sypnowich) The Social Self. London: Sage, 1995.

Edited Journal Issues

• Teaching and Learning: Epistemic, Metaphysical and Ethical Dimensions. Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education, 54 (2), 2020.
• (with I. Kliger) Hegel in Russia. Special Issue of Studies in East European Thought, 65 (3-4), 2013.

Recent Journal Articles

• “Analysis and Transcendence in The Sovereignty of Good”, European Journal of Philosophy 28 (2020): 214–223. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.12539
• “Teaching, Telling and Technology”, Journal of Philosophy of Education 54/2 (2020): 305–318.
• “Teaching and Learning: Epistemic, Metaphysical and Ethical Dimensions—Introduction”, Journal of Philosophy of Education 54/2 (2020): 355–267.
• “Practice, Sensibility, and Moral Education”, Journal of Philosophy of Education 52/4 (2018): 677–694.
• “Trouble with Knowledge”, Philosophy, 93/3 (2018): 433–453.
• “On Lenin’s Materialism and Empirocriticism”, Studies in East European Thought 70 (2018): 107–119, DOI: 10.1007/s11212-018-9303-7.
• “Activity, Action and Self-consciousness”, Educational Review 70/1 (2018): 91-99, DOI: 10.1080/00131911.2018.1388618.
• “Training, Transformation, and Education”, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 76 (2015): 301-327.

Recent Chapters in Books

• “E. V. Ilyenkov: Philosophy as the Science of Thought”, in M. Bykova, L. Steiner and M. Forster (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Russian Thought (forthcoming).
• “Punks versus Zombies: Evald Ilyenkov and the Battle for Soviet Philosophy”, in V. Lektorsky and M. Bykova (eds.), Philosophical Thought in Russia in the Second Half of the 20th Century: A Contemporary View from Russia and Abroad. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019, 53–78.
• “The Spirit of Pragmatism in the Quads of Oxford”, in C. Misak and H. Price (eds), The Practical Turn: Pragmatism in Britain in the Long Twentieth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018, 75-90.
• (with Cheryl Misak) “Wittgenstein and Pragmatism”, in H.-J. Glock and J. Hyman (eds), The Blackwell Companion to Wittgenstein. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017, 731-745.
• “Education and Conversation”, in D. Bakhurst and P. Fairfield (eds), Education and Conversation: Exploring Oakeshott’s Legacy. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016, 5-26.
• “Activity and the Search for True Materialism”, in V. Oittenen and A. Maidansky (eds), The Practical Essence of Man: The ‘Activity Approach’ in Late Soviet Philosophy. Leiden: Brill, 2015, 17-28.

Recent Review Articles

• “Ilyenkov’s Passion”, Mind, Culture, and Activity 22/1 (2015): 68-73.
• “Understanding Vygotsky: Jan Derry’s Vygotsky, Psychology and Education”, Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 5 (2015): 1-4.
• “David Wiggins’s Sameness and Substance Renewed”, Philosophy 79/1 (2004): 133-141.

Work in progress

I am preparing an edition of my papers on Russian thought, entitled The Heart of the Matter: Essays on Ilyenkov, Vygotsky and Meaning and Mind (Brill Publications).  I am also working on papers on human nature and morality, habit, and philosophical psychology.

Media

Interview with 3am Magazine

Teaching

Courses (2020-21)

• PHIL-250 Epistemology and Metaphysics
• PHIL-311 Philosophy of Psychology
• PHIL-841 20th Century Philosophy: Anscombe and Midgely (graduate seminar)

Current Supervision

4 doctoral students working respectively on Iris Murdoch, ethical particularism, Evald Ilyenkov, and philosophy of psychiatry