Karin Nisenbaum

Karin Nisenbaum is a faculty fellow jointly sponsored by the Institute for Ethics and the Common Good and the History of Philosophy Forum. She is an associate professor of philosophy and the Renée Crown Professor in the Humanities at Syracuse University. Her research focuses on topics at the intersection of ethics and metaphysics in the philosophy of Kant, in Post-Kantian German Idealism, and in 19th- and 20th-century Jewish Thought.

During her tenure at Notre Dame’s Institute for Ethics and the Common Good, Nisenbaum will be working on a manuscript about different conceptions of the highest good in Kant and in the German idealist philosophical tradition. One main aim of this project is to challenge the widely accepted idea that Kant’s moral theory is one without a notion of value as its fundamental concept (the standard deontological reading). A subsidiary aim is to make the case that the highest good should be reinstated as an important theme for contemporary moral philosophy.

In her book, For the Love of Metaphysics: Nihilism and the Conflict of Reason from Kant to Rosenzweig (Oxford University Press, 2018), Nisenbaum presents a new perspective on the history of German Idealism that focuses on the role of the principle of sufficient reason and the Kantian idea of the primacy of practical reason.

Before moving to Syracuse University, Nisenbaum taught at Boston College, Colgate University, and the University of Denver. She was also a Mandel postdoctoral fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She received her Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Toronto. Her awards include an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for Advanced Researchers, an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for Postdoctoral Researchers, and a Leo Baeck Fellowship.