Curriculum Vitæ (in brief)

Dennis Des Chene

Department of Philosophy
Campus Box 1073
Washington University
Saint Louis, MO 63130-4899

EDUCATION

Ph. D. Philosophy, Stanford University, 1987
B. A. Linguistics, University of Washington, 1980

POSITIONS HELD

2003- Professor of Philosophy, Washington University
2000-03 Associate Professor, Emory University
2000 Visiting Professor, University of Munich (Sommersemester)
2000 Visiting Professor, University of Pennsylvania (Spring)
1994-99 Associate Professor, The Johns Hopkins University
1997 Visiting Professor, Harvard University (History of Science, Fall semester)
1988-94 Assistant Professor, The Johns Hopkins University
1987-88 Harper-Mellon Teaching Fellow, University of Chicago

FELLOWSHIPS, GRANTS, AND AWARDS (after 1987)

2007 John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Award
2007 American Philosophical Society Award
2004 Invited Lecturer, NEH Summer Institute, University of Wisconsin, Madison, July 2004
2001 Invited Lecturer, Summer school in the history of science, Centre Alexandre Koyré, Paris, September 2001
2000 Dibner Senior Fellowship. Dibner Institute for the History of Science, MIT (declined)
1997 Morris D. Forkosch Prize awarded to Physiologia
1996 Physiologia selected as a Choice Academic Book of the Year for 1996
1996 ACLS Travel Grant (to participate in the colloquium “Descartes et le Moyen Âge”, Sorbonne, Paris)
1996 NEH Fellowship. Title of Proposal: “Cartesian Psychology in its Historical Setting”
1994 NEH Subvention awarded to Cornell University Press for publication of Physiologia
1992-93 Lilly Foundation Teaching Fellow
1988 NEH Summer Institute on Early Modern Philosophy, Brown University

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Books
2001 Spirits and Clocks. Organism and Machine in Descartes. Cornell University Press, 2001.
2000 Life’s Form. Late Aristotelian Theories of the Soul. Cornell University Press, 2000.
1996 Physiologia. Natural Philosophy in Late Aristotelian and Cartesian Philosophy. Cornell University Press, 1996.
Co-authored Books
2003 Roger Ariew, ed.; Dennis Des Chene, Douglas M. Jesseph, Tad M. Schmaltz, Theo Verbeek. Historical Dictionary of Descartes and Cartesian Philosophy. Lanham, MD; Oxford: Scarecrow Press, 2003.
Articles
— “Suárez on appetite”. To be published in a volume based on the conference “Psychology and the other disciplines” (see below).
— “Imagined machines and the real world”. In press for September 2008 in Ludger Schwarte et al., eds., Theatrum machinarum. Walter de Gruyter.
2007“Forms of art in Jesuit Aristotelianism (with a coda on Descartes)”. In William Newman and Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, eds., The Artificial and the Natural: An Ancient Debate and its Modern Descendants (MIT, 2007).
2007“Abstracting from the soul: the mechanics of locomotion”. In Jessica Riskin, ed., Genesis redux. University of Chicago Press, 2007.
2006“Descartes reduced: review essay on Desmond Clarke’s Descartes’ theory of mind”. Oxford studies in early modern philosophy 3 (2006).
2006‘Animal’ as Concept: Bayle’s “Rorarius”. In Justin Smith, ed., The Problem of Animal Generation in Modern Philosophy. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
2005“Aristotelian natural philosophy”. In Donald Rutherford, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Philosophy. Cambridge University Press, 2005.
2004 “Mechanisms of life in the seventeenth century”. Studies in the history and philosophy of biology 36 (2005):245–260. (Special issue edited by Carl Craver and Lindley Darden)
2003 “Life after Descartes: Régis on Generation”. Perspectives on Science 11(2003):410–420.
2000 “Life and Health in Descartes and After”. In Descartes’ Natural Philosophy, ed. Stephen Gaukroger, John Schuster, and John Sutton (Routledge, 2000), 723–735.
1997 “L’Immatérialité de l’âme: Suárez et Descartes”. In Descartes et le moyen âge, ed. Joël Biard (Paris: Vrin, 1997), 319–327.

SELECTED PRESENTATIONS

2008 Invited talk for a conference on Suárez at the University of Western Ontario, Oct 2008.
2008 “Using the passions”, Conference on the Passions (Lisa Shapiro, organizer), UBC, May 2008.
2006 “Suárez on appetite”. ESF Conference “Psychology and the other disciplines”, 31 May–2 June, Nijmegen (Netherlands).
2006 “Using the passions”. Zeno Lecture, Utrecht University, 26 April 2007.
2006 “Suárez on habitus”. ESF Conference “Transformations of the Soul”, Berlin, 15–17 November 2005.
2006 “What are modes (and why did Descartes like them)?”. Montreal Interuniversity Workshop in the History of Philosophy, Montréal, October 2006.
2005 “Imaginary machines and the real world”. Theatrum Machinarum, Berlin, November 2005.
2004 “Philosophy of mathematics and the theory of quantales”. University of Pittsburgh, Center for Philosophy of Science, December 2004. An earlier version was presented at Indiana University, April 2004.
2004 “Treating the passions”. Midwest Early Modern Seminar, April 2004.
2003 “Versions of mechanism in the 17th century: Régis, Borelli, Perrault”. Conference on Mechanisms. Washington University, 7-9 November 2003.
2003 “Abstracting from the Soul: The Mechanics of Locomotion”. Stanford Workshop on Artificial Life. Stanford University, 4-6 October 2003.
2002 Invited Lecturer at the 8th International Summer School in History of Science of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris): “Rethinking Scientific Knowledge in the 16th and Early 17th Centuries”. September 2002.
2002 “Souls: sensitive and separated”. Conference on “Forming the Mind”, Uppsala University, September 2002.
2002 “Life after Descartes: Sylvain Régis”. History of Philosophy of Science (HOPOS) Conference, Concordia University, Montréal, June 2002.

LANGUAGES

French, Latin, German, Greek