James Reid

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James Reid

Professor of Philosophy

Philosophy

Bio

James D. Reid studied philosophy and biology at Case Western Reserve University and holds a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Chicago. He has taught ethics and the history of philosophy at Chicago (where he won a Wayne C. Booth Graduate Student Prize for Excellence in Teaching), Colorado College, the College of William and Mary, and the United States Air Force Academy. He is currently professor of philosophy at the Metropolitan State University of Denver. In 2016 he received a sizeable grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support translation work on Martin Heidegger. His research is interdisciplinary, drawing from philosophical, scientific, and literary sources, and is devoted to problems in the theory of meaning, value, and significance, and finding appropriate ways of talking about the importance of what we care about. He is the author of Being Here Is Glorious: On Rilke, Philosophy, and Poetry (Northwestern UP), Heidegger's Moral Ontology (Cambridge UP), and Agency and Imagination in the Films of David Lynch (Lexington), translator of Martin Heidegger's The Question Concerning the Thing (Rowman & Littlefield), and co-editor of Thoreau's Importance for Philosophy (Fordham UP). He is series co-founder and editor of Bloomsbury Studies in Philosophy and Poetry. His current projects include a monograph on the German philosophical poet Novalis (Oxford UP), a translation of selected philosophical, literary, and poetic writings by Novalis (Oxford UP), a volume on the philosophical dimensions of the films of Terrence Malick, and a book-length study of Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus. Thanks to a generous award from the National Endowment for the Humanities, he will be on research leave until 2023.

Degree

PhD in Philosophy

University of Chicago

BA in Philosophy

Case Western Reserve University

Published Works

  • Reid, D. J., Davis, S. W., Wood, W. D. . Novalis: Writings on Nature and Natural Science. (). .
  • Reid, D. J. (2025). Fichte und Novalis. Nomos,
  • Reid, D. J. . Review of "Return of the Gods: Mythology in Romantic Philosophy and Literature". Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology,
  • Reid, D. J. . Novalis's Philosophical Fictions. (pp 418). Oxford University Press.
  • Reid, D. J. . Heidegger on Poetry. (). Oxford University Press.
  • Reid, D. J. (2025). Freedom in Nature: The Moral of Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Studia Philosophica Kantiana.
  • Reid, D. J. (2024). Novalis: Philosophical, Literary, and Poetic Writings. (pp 568). Oxford University Press.
  • Reid, D. J. . "Ein Mund der Natur": A Poetic Phenomenology of Nature in Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus. (). De Gruyter.
  • Reid, D. J. . Melville Among the Transcendentalists: Doubt and Affirmation in Moby-Dick. (). Oxford University Press: Oxford Studies in Philosophy and Literature.
  • Reid, D. J., Craig, R. C. (2023). "Why Should I Be Good If You Aren't?": The Problem of the Moral World in 'The Tree of Life'. (). SUNY Press.
  • Reid, D. J. (2021). Novalis's Poetic Philosophy of Nature. Synphilosophie.
  • Reid, D. J. (2021). Ding. (). Cambridge University Press.
  • Reid, D. J. (2021). Gut. (). Cambridge University Press.
  • Reid, D. J. (2021). Realität. (). Cambridge University Press.
  • Reid, D. J. (2021). Wirklichkeit. (). Cambridge University Press.
  • Reid, D. J. . Novalis's Hemsterhuis Studies: An Annotated Translation. Symphilosophie: International Journal of Philosophical Romanticism.
  • Reid, D. J. (2020). Review of Christian Jany's Scenographies of Perception: Sensuousness in Hegel, Novalis, Rilke, and Proust. Monatshefte,
  • Reid, D. J. (2020). Novalis's Philosophical Fictions: Love, Reason, and the Given from the Fichte-Studies to the Hymns to the Night. European Journal of Philosophy.
  • Reid, D. J., Craig, R. C. (2019). Agency and Imagination in the Films of David Lynch: Philosophical Perspectives. (pp 280). Lexington Books, a Division of Rowman & Littlefield.
  • Reid, D. J. (2019). On Inwardness and Place in Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus. (). Oxford University Press.
  • Reid, D. J. (2018). Heidegger's Moral Ontology. (pp 256). Cambridge University Press.
  • Reid, D. J., Crowe, D. B. (2018). The Question Concerning the Thing. (pp 194). Rowman & Littlefield.
  • Reid, D. J., Furtak, A. R. (2018). The Time Is Out of Joint: On Social Ontology and Criticism in Kierkegaard and Heidegger. (pp 141-162). Pickwick.
  • Reid, D. J. (2017). Review of Lyric Orientations by Hannah Eldridge. German Studies Review,
  • Reid, D. J., . (2015). Being Here Is Glorious: On Rilke, Poetry, and Philosophy. (pp 184). Northwestern University Press.
  • Reid, D. J., Furtak, A. R. (2013). Thoreau and American Philosophy: A Response to Our Critics. Thoreau Society Bulletin,
  • Reid, D. J., Furtak, A. R., Ellsworth, J. (2012). "Locating Thoreau, Reorienting Philosophy". (pp 16). Fordham University Press.
  • Reid, D. J. (2012). Speaking Extravagantly: Philosophical Territory and Eccentricity in "Walden". (pp 39). Fordham University Press.
  • Furtak, A. R., Ellsworth, J., Reid, D. J. (2012). Thoreau's Importance for Philosophy. (pp 314). Fordham University Press.
  • Reid, D. J. (2007). Review of S.J. McGrath, The Early Heidegger and Medieval Philosophy. Journal of the History of Philosophy,
  • Reid, D. J. (2005). Ethical Criticism in Heidegger's Early Freiburg Lectures. Review of Metaphysics, 59(September 2005), 33-71. .
  • Reid, D. J. (2004). Morality and Sensibility in Kant: Toward a Theory of Virtue. Kantian Review, 8(2004), 89-114. .
  • Reid, D. J. (2003). The Unity of Theoretical Subjectivity in Kant and Fichte. Review of Metaphysics, 57(December 2003), 243-277. .
  • Reid, D. J. (2001). Dilthey's Epistemology of the Geisteswissenschaften. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 39(July 2001), 407-436. .

Research Interests

My research centers on problems in metaphysics, human nature, and ethical life, and the history of ancient and 19th and 20th century German philosophy.

Teaching Interests

My teaching interests are in ethics and the history of philosophy.