About

Gerad Gentry is a fixed term Assistant Professor in Philosophy at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz
Research Interests: Kant, Hegel, and neo-Aristotelianism, ethics, theoretical philosophy (including skepticism, mind, and conditions of knowledge), and aesthetics
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, Freedom and Actuality: Hegel on 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 Publications:
Freedom of Actuality: Hegel on 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, forthcoming 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

Select Current and Upcoming talks:
*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 “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
*2025 “Schiller, Goethe and the role of Aristotelian friendship in the aesthetic state" University of Bonn
*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

Bio

Gerad Gentry

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Assistant Professor

(fixed term)

Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz

Education

Habilitation (candidate) Univ. Mainz

Ph.D. (candidate) Univ. Cambridge

Ph.D. University of South Carolina

M.A. University of Chicago

B.A. Houghton College

Visiting Scholar/Fellow:

University of Notre Dame, Humboldt University of Berlin & Potsdam, University of Chicago, Yale University, Fulbright Fellow, Alexander von Humboldt Fellow, DAAD Mainz Guest Professor; program committee of the APA

Gerad Gentry

About

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

Bio

Gerad Gentry

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