About

Gerad Gentry is an Assistant Professor in Philosophy (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter, fixed term) at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz

Research Interests: ethics, aesthetic and philosophy of literature, theoretical philosophy (incl. skepticism), ethics and AI.
History of modern philosophy: Kant, Hegel, and neo-Aristotelianism

His work engages the systematic relation between ethics, mind, and aesthetics and attends particularly to the necessary conditions of epistemic systems and possible answers to radical skepticism in Kant and Hegel. This includes a forthcoming work, Hegel on Freedom and Ethical Life (Cambridge University Press, Elements Series on Hegel), which traces features of Kant and Aristotle's ethics in Hegel's notion of freedom as the highest principle in ethics. He is also at work on an account of Kant's conception of the normativity of the reflecting power of judgment. He also has interests in questions of applied philosophy of AI (ethics and mind) and philosophy of literature. His recent publications have appeared in the Journal of the History of Philosophy, the Journal of the American Philosophical Association, Kant-Studien, Intellectual History Review, Cambridge University Press.

Select Current and Upcoming talks:
*2025 “Action and Hegelian Constitutivism” Kant, Hegel, and their Successors, Harvard University
*2025 “Hegel on Freedom as an Active Principle of the Ethical Life" University of Heidelberg
*2025 “Moral Reasoning and the Intrinsic Ethical worth of Literary Art” University of Chicago, Philosophy and Literature Workshop
*2025 “Schiller and the Ethics of Aristotelian Friendship" Symphilosophie, University of Bonn
*2025 “Kant, Free Lawfulness and the highest good,” History of Philosophy Forum, University of Notre Dame
*2025 “Kant’s Free Lawfulness and civil society” SGIR, University of Mainz, Thyssen
*2024 “Hegelian Constitutivism - freedom and Hegel on ethical life” University of Mainz, ethics/ Practical Philosophy Workshop
*2024 “Kant and the normative form of the reflecting power of judgment" University of Tübingen
2024 “Is Kant's principle of human dignity absolute?” Immanuel Kant, 300 Years, University of Catania
*2024 “Activity and Actuality Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind” The Life of the Mind, History of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame
*2024 “Freedom as Innate Right or as Highest Good: rethinking the modern democratic state” Democracy. Funded by the European Union / Erasmus, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
2024 "Ethics and AI: differentiating ethical normativity of non-agential mimetic acts from non-self-conscious agency” Virtue Ethics and Technology, KU Leuven
2024 "Virtue and Artificial Intelligence" XXVI. Deutscher Kongress für Philosophie, Münster
*2024 “Kant and the Problem of the Idealism of Art: freedom, nature, and the self-legislation” SGIR, University of Cambridge, and at the Immanuel Kant 300, University of Warmia & Mazury in Olsztyn, Poland

Select Publications:
Hegel on Freedom and Ethical Life. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge elements on Hegel, forthcoming 2025
“Hegel and the Role of Literature in Ethical Theory” in Hegel and Literary Studies, edited by Allen Speight. Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2025
“Acts and Agency in Two-Kinds of Artificial Intelligence” special issue Epistemic Identity and Epistemic Virtue: Human Mind and Artificial Intelligence, Vodka Strahovnik and the Centre for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and the Ethics of New Technologies, Lexington Books, forthcoming 2025
“Hegel’s Concept of Actuality and the Life of the Mind: Aristotle, Hegel, and self-activity” Notre Dame Studies in the Philosophy of the Life of the Mind, edited by Katharina Kraus and Stephen Ogden. Springer, forthcoming 2025
"Hegel's Theory of Time" Open Philosophy Special Issues: The Human Being and the Being of Time, de Gruyter, 2024
Art, Nature, and Self-formation in the Age of Goethe. Edited by Gerad Gentry, Mattias Pirholt, and Camilla Flodin. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2024. 295 pages
"Hegel's End of Art and the Artwork as an Internally Purposive Whole" Journal of the History of Philosophy, 61(3), 2023: 473-498
"Artworks are Valuable for their own Sake" Journal of the American Philosophical Association: 9(2), 2023: 234-252
"Pure Synthesis and the Principle of the Synthetic Unity of Apperception" Kant-Studien 113, no. 1, 2022: 8-39.
“Hegel’s Logic of Negation,” in Negation in Post-Kantian Philosophy, ed. by Moss, Springer, 2022: 397-419
“The Concept of Life in German Idealism and its Aristotelian Roots” Intellectual History Review 31, no. 3, 2021: 379-390
“Hegel’s Logic of Purposiveness,” Kantian Legacies in German Idealism. In Routledge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Philosophy, Routledge, 2021: 36-70
“The Ground of Hegel’s Logic of Life and the Unity of Reason: The Free Lawfulness of the Imagination” The Imagination in German Idealism and Romanticism. Ed. Gerad Gentry and Konstantin Pollok. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019

Gerad Gentry

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Assistant Professor

Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz

Education

Habilitation (candidate) Univ. Mainz

Ph.D. University of Cambridge

Ph.D. University of South Carolina

M.A. University of Chicago

B.A. Houghton College

He has been a research associate and fellow at:

University of Chicago, Humboldt University of Berlin, Yale University, University of Freiburg, University of Potsdam, & Notre Dame.

He has taught graduate and undergraduate seminars in Mainz, Freiburg, Chicago, and Columbia.

Gerad Gentry

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Gerad Gentry

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Areas of Research in Modern Philosophy

Ethics

Theoretical Philosophy (incl. mind, skepticism, conditions of knowledge)

Theoretical Philosophy (incl. mind, skepticism, conditions of knowledge)

Theoretical Philosophy (incl. mind, skepticism, conditions of knowledge)

Theoretical Philosophy (incl. mind, skepticism, conditions of knowledge)

Theoretical Philosophy (incl. mind, skepticism, conditions of knowledge)

Aesthetics and Philosophy of Literature

Aesthetics and Philosophy of Literature

Aesthetics and Philosophy of Literature

Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence

Aesthetics and Philosophy of Literature

Aesthetics and Philosophy of Literature