About

Gerad Gentry is an Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Baylor University. Previously, he held Fulbright, DAAD, and Humboldt research fellowships and has been a fellow or associate at the University of Mainz, University of Chicago, Humboldt University of Berlin and Potsdam, University of Freiburg, and Yale University.

Areas of Research: metaethics (esp. the normative form of action, rational agency, and human worth), theoretical philosophy (incl. skepticism), aesthetic and philosophy of literature; 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), which traces features of Kant and Aristotle's ethics in Hegel's notion of freedom as the highest principle in ethics. He is wrapping up a book on Kant's conception of the normativity of the reflecting power of judgment and is also at work on a book in metaethics that explores the constitutive nature of human action and rational agency. He has received an University of Notre Dame visiting research grant for his work on Kant (2026) and an AvH Grant (2026) for the first conference in a collective research initiative on the relevance of Hegelian Constitutivism in contemporary metaethics.
He has a side interest in questions of AI ethics and philosophy of AI.

Upcoming and Recent Talks:
*2026 “Action and Hegelian Constitutivism” Kant, Hegel, and their Successors, Harvard University
*2026 “With what must a reason begin?” Metaphysics and Method, University of Heidelberg
*2026 “Just a Thin Judgment of the Beautiful,” History of Philosophy Forum, University of Notre Dame
*2026 “Hegel and the Role of Literature in Ethical Theory” University of Pavia
*2026 "Action and Rational Agency: Hegelian Constitutivism," Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung Kolleg, Baylor University
*2025 “Freedom and Hegelian Constitutivism" Biennial Conference of the Australian Hegel Society, University of New South Wales, Sydney
*2025 “Hegel on Freedom as an Active Principle of the Ethical Life" University of Heidelberg
*2024 “Hegelian Constitutivism - freedom and Hegel on ethical life” University of Mainz, ethics/ Practical Philosophy Workshop
*2025 “Friendship in Aristotle and Schiller" University of Bonn
*2025 “Kant’s Free Lawfulness and civil society” SGIR, University of Mainz, Thyssen
*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, forthcoming
“Hegel and the Role of Literature in Ethical Theory” in Hegel and Literary Studies, edited by Allen Speight. Cambridge University Press, forthcoming
“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
“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
"Hegel's Theory of Time" Special Issues: The Human Being and the Being of Time, Open Philosophy, 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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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