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Neil Turnbull

Neil Turnbull

Interim Head of Department

School of Arts & Humanities

Staff Group(s)
English, Linguistics and Philosophy

Role

Neil Turnbull is a philosopher – by love and not simply by profession. His philosophical passions cover the full range of the philosophy curriculum, from ancient Stoicism and Cynicism to the work of 20th century philosophers like Wittgenstein and Heidegger. He also has prior training and a significant interest in the philosophy of AI. Neil subscribes to the idea that philosophy is much more a theory or a doctrine but is a way of life.

Research areas

Areas of research / interest include:

  • Philosophy and Culture - examining the impact of globalisation on philosophy
  • Philosophy and Religion - examining the interface between philosophy, theology and secularisation
  • Philosophy and Science - examining the epistemological and metaphysical bases of modern science and how these impact upon our wider understanding of the nature of modernity

Opportunities to carry out postgraduate research towards an MPhil/PhD exist in all of the areas identified above and further information may be obtained from the NTU Doctoral School.

External activity

Publications

Thinking and the Art of Furniture - in Space and Culture, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2004, pp. 1156-172.

Theory and the Folk in New Formations No. 51, Winter 2003-04, pp. 99-112.

Making it Happen: Philosophy Hermeneutics and the Truth of Art in Theory, Culture and Society, Vol. 21. No. 6, 2004, pp. 171-178.

Philosophical Aspects of Hardt and Negri’s Empire in Political Geography, 23(4), 2004, pp.  457-62.

Crossing Nietzsche in Theory, Culture and Society, Vol. 22, No. 3, 2005, pp 139-149.

At Modernity’s Limit: Technology as World and Idea in Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 23, No 5, 2006, pp 135-150.

The Logic of Possible Worlds in Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 23, Nos. 2-3, 2006, 94-95.

The Ontological Consequences of Copernicus: Global Being in the Planetary World in Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 23, No 1, 2006, 125-139.

Wittgenstein’s Leben: Language, Philosophy and the Authority of the Everyday in Chandler, P. and Cunningham, C. (eds.) Belief and Metaphysics, Canterbury, SCM Press, 2008, pp 374-392.

Attention and Automaticity: An Interview with Barbara Stafford in Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 24, No. 7-8, 2007, pp. 342-348.

Epistemology (co-written with Andrew Knight) in Knight, A. and Ruddock, L. (eds.) Advanced Research Methods in the Built Environment   Oxford: Blackwell, 2008.

Technology as a Theme in Conservative Thought in Writing Technologies, Dec 2008

On Left Spinozism, in Telos, Teloscope, Feb, 2010.

Persons or Creatures?  Sellars, Whitehead and the Metaphysical Problem of Late Modernity in Turnbull, N. (ed.) Radical Orthodoxy: Annual Review I Eugene Or: Wipf and Stock, 2012, pp. 152-79

Deleuze, Marx and the Extent of the Theological: An Interview with Philip Goodchild in Radical OrthodoxyVol. 1, No. 3, 2013, pp. 560-77.

The New Politics of Association: An Interview with Maurice Glasman in Radical Orthodoxy, Vol. 2 No. 1, 2014, pp.

Light and Illumination: Paul Virilio’s Neo-Platonism and the Theological Critique of Modernity in Cultural Politics, Vol. 11, No. 2, 2015, pp. 260-74

Beyond Death’s Dream Kingdom: Psychoanalysis and the Modern Social Imaginary in Imago June 2015, pp. 89-132

Edited Special Issue (in two parts) Technology as/and Social Imaginary, in Imago,2016.

Edited Special Issue (with Mariavita Cambria and Milena Meo) The Political Imaginary, Imago, 2019, No 14.

The Political Imaginary after Neo-liberalism: The Return of Elemental Politics, in special issue on The Political Imaginary, Imago, No. 14, pp, 23-36.

The Two Kings of Modernity: Science and Religion in Simmel’s Metaphysics of Value in Société: Revues Des Sciences Humaines et Sociales No. 146, 2019, pp. 53-64.

Edited volume, Radical Orthodoxy, Annual Review I, Life Eugene Or: Wipf and Stock, 2012.

Occasional publications:

Get a Grip on Philosophy London: Wiedenfield and Nicholson 1999.

Series Editor – ‘Manifestos’, Barrons Press: New York, 2004.  Four books in the series: Boyle, D. The Communist Manifesto; MacGillivary, A.    Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring; Kirk, A.    Civil Disobedience; Schwartz Driver, S. Declaration of Independence

PhDs supervised to completion:

Clancy, Craig The Temporal Basis of Autonomy: Gorz and Reduced Working Hours (2006)

Spinelli-Coleman, Donatella This Thing of Darkness I Acknowledge Mine: Film Theory and the Jungian Archetypes (2007).

Cumming, Tom Conceptualism and Practical Significance: The McDowell Dreyfus Debate (2020).

See all of Neil Turnbull's publications...