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Dr Manuel Dries

PhD (Cambridge)

Dr Manuel Dries, Philosopher, The Open University, United Kingdom

Profile summary

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Professional biography

Manuel Dries (PhD Cambridge) is Senior Lecurer of Philosophy in the School of Social Sciences and Global Studies at The Open University. He was Head of Department from 2017-2023 and is currently Director of Research and Unit of Assessment Lead for REF2029. Previously he held Research Fellowships at the University of Oxford and the French CNRS. He remains an affiliated member of Oxford’s Faculty of Philosophy and Wolfson College.

Research interests

Research Interests: post-Kantian European philosophy, philosophy of mind, ethics, aesthetics.

Manuel Dries focuses on questions at the interface between metaphysics, ethics, and the philosophy of mind. He has a particular interest in the history of post-Kantian European philosophy and its contributions to contemporary debates in those fields. Recent publications include Nietzsche on Consciousness and the Embodied Mind (ed., De Gruyter 2018), Nietzsche on Mind and Nature (ed. with P. Kail, OUP 2015), a set of three articles on value creation in the journal Nietzsche-Studien 44 (2015); and the journal articles 'memento mori – memento vivere. Early Nietzsche on History, Embodiment and Value' in The Journal of Nietzsche Studies, and 'Metaphysician, Philosopher, Psychologist? Making Sense of Nietzsche's Sense-Making', in Philosophical Topics 43 (2015). He is currently working on a monograph on Nietzsche's Conception of Freedom and Agency.

Publications: For access to publications and events, please to my research archive on Academia.edu or Philpapers.org

Doctoral Supervision: Manuel Dries considers expressions of interest for doctoral supervision from prospective PhD students. Past and present doctoral candidates are:
 
Hurrell, David: ‘An Analysis of Nietzsche’s Conception of Decadence’ (PhD funded by CHASE)
Lead supervisor; with C. Chimisso (second supervisor); Awarded (2019)
 
Pawlett Jackson, Sarah: ‘Facing the Third Person in Levinas: Understanding multipersonal intersubjectivity’
Internal supervisor; with S.-G. Chappell (Lead supervisor); PhD awarded (2020)
 
Jones, Robert: 'Value, Self-Creation, and the Embodied Self' (funded by OOC)
Lead supervisor; with S.-G. Chappell (Internal supervisor); PhD awarded (2024) 
 
Mathison, Iain: 'Bachelard on the Imagination' (MPhil)
Internal supervisor; with C. Chimisso (Lead supervisor)
 
Coppin, Joseph: 'Nietzsche's Attempt to Overcome the Fact-Value Distinction' (PhD)
Lead supervisor; with C. Chimisso (Internal supervisor)
 
Leigh, James: 'Nietzsche and Anti-Philosophy' (PhD)
Lead Supervior; with S.-G. Chappell (Internal supervior)
 
Vernon, Peter: 'Nietzsche: Will to Truth and Nihilism' (PhD)
Lead supervisor; with Dan Cavedon-Taylor (Internal supervisor)
 
Viswanathan, Kumar: 'Moralism in Ethics and Politics' (PhD)
Internal supervisor; with S.-G. Chappell (Lead supervisor)
 

Teaching interests

Manuel Dries has lectured on Nietzsche (Universities of Cambridge and Oxford), Self and World from Kant to Nietzsche, Fichte and Early Romantic Philosophy, and Schopenhauer at the University of Oxford (2007–2013). He has taught graduate classes and research seminars on philosophical aesthetics and 19th and 20th-century European philosophy. He is co-founder and co-convenor (with Jospeh Schear and Mark Wrathall) of the Post-Kantian European Philosophy Seminar series at the University of Oxford (since 2010) and a member of the Values and Reasons Research Cluster at The Open University. In 2017 he gave a lecture series on Nietzsche's Philosophical Anthropology at Beijing's Renmin University as part of the UK-China Philosophy Summer School. He has been Visiting Professor at Tongji University, Shanghai, in 2017 and taught a Masterclass on Nietzsche's Genealogy (with H. Heit and U.A. Sommer) in December 2019.

For The Open University Manuel Dries has been a member of the module team that oversaw the interdisciplinary module A207 From Enlightenment to Romanticism c.1780–1830 (Deputy Chair 2014–16). From 2015–2018 he was Module Chair of A333: Key Questions in Philosophy. He is a contributing author to the Open University's MA in Philosophy on Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality. In 2019 he acted as Lead Academic for Global Ethics: An Introduction, freely available on FutureLearn. He is currently working on teaching materials on 'Freedom and free will in the post-Kantian tradition' for a new third-level philosophy module.

Impact and engagement

Manuel Dries regularly acted as Academic advisor for the BBC. He advised on BCC Ideas and the BBC Four series Genius of the Modern World: Nietzsche (IMDB). Between 2008 and 2011 he participated in a number of European Commission projects related to Digital Research Infrastructures (DISCOVERY ProjectNietzscheSource), Semantic Web, and Open Access in Philosophy (Agora. Scholarly Open Access Research in European Philosophy CIP-ICT PSP-2010-4, no: 270904). 

Publications

Memento Mori, Memento Vivere: Early Nietzsche on History, Embodiment, and Value (2017)
Dries, Manuel
Journal of Nietzsche Studies, 48(1) (pp. 29-55)


1.3 How hard is it to create values? (2015-11-30)
Dries, Manuel
Nietzsche-Studien, 44(1) (pp. 30-43)


2.3 What is it like to recognize values? (The hard problem of value 2) (2015-11-30)
Dries, Manuel
Nietzsche-Studien, 44(1)


3.3 What Mary didn’t know about values (The hard problem of value 3) (2015-11-30)
Dries, Manuel
Nietzsche-Studien, 44(1)


Metaphysician, Philosopher, Psychologist? — Making Sense of Nietzsche’s Sense-Making (2015)
Dries, Manuel
Philosophical Topics, 43(1 & 2) (pp. 213-238)


The feeling of doing - Nietzsche on agent causation (2013-12-18)
Dries, Manuel
Nietzscheforschung, 20(1) (pp. 235-247)


On the logic of values (2010)
Dries, Manuel
Journal of Nietzsche Studies, 39(Spring) (pp. 30-50)


Friedrich Schiller’s adualistic conception of unity (2006-03)
Dries, Manuel
Publications of the English Goethe Society, 75(1) (pp. 53-58)


Introduction to Nietzsche on Consciousness and the Embodied Mind (2018-09)
Dries, Manuel
In: Dries, Manuel ed. Nietzsche on Consciousness and the Embodied Mind. Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung (MTNF) (70) (pp. 1-13)
ISBN : 978-3-11-024653-7 | Publisher : De Gruyter | Published : Boston, USA; Berlin, Germany


Early Nietzsche on History, Embodiment, and Value (2018-09)
Dries, Manuel
In: Dries, Manuel ed. Nietzsche on Consciousness and the Embodied Mind. Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung (MTNF) (70) (pp. 49-70)
ISBN : 978-3-11-024653-7 | Publisher : De Gruyter | Published : Boston, USA; Berlin, Germany


Freedom, resistance, agency (2015-07-09)
Dries, M.
In: Dries, M. and Kail, P. J. E. eds. Nietzsche on Mind and Nature (pp. 142-162)
ISBN : 978-0-19-872223-6 | Publisher : Oxford University Press | Published : Oxford


Introduction to Nietzsche on Mind and Nature (2015-07-09)
Dries, Manuel and Kail, P. J. E.
In: Dries, Manuel and Kail, P. J. E. eds. Nietzsche on Mind and Nature (pp. 142-162)
Publisher : Oxford University Press | Published : Oxford


Nietzsche’s critique of staticism: introduction to Nietzsche on Time and History (2008-11)
Dries, Manuel
In: Dries, Manuel ed. Nietzsche on Time and History (pp. 1-19)
ISBN : 978-3-11-019009-0 | Publisher : Walter de Gruyter | Published : Berlin


Towards adualism: becoming and nihilism in Nietzsche’s philosophy (2008)
Dries, Manuel
In: Dries, Manuel ed. Nietzsche on Time and History (pp. 113-145)
ISBN : 978-3-11-019009-0 | Publisher : Walter de Gruyter | Published : Berlin


Nietzsche on Consciousness and the Embodied Mind (2018-09-01)
Dries, Manuel ed.
Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung (MTNF)
ISBN : 978-3-11-024653-7 | Publisher : Walter de Gruyter | Published : Boston, Berlin


Nietzsche on Mind and Nature (2015-07-09)
Dries, Manuel and Kail, P. J. E. eds.
ISBN : 978-0-19-872223-6 | Publisher : Oxford University Press | Published : Oxford


Nietzsche on Time and History (2008-11)
Dries, Manuel ed.
ISBN : 9783110190090 | Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co | Published : Berlin