Department of Philosophy

Tamara Albertini received her D.Phil. in 1991 from Ludwig Maximilians Universität, Munich. She has been a Visiting Assistant Professor at UCLA, Lecturer at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, Assistant Professor at Ludwig Maximilians Universitat, Munich, Germany. She has been the recipient of several grants and awards, including a NEH Grant for research in Central Asia. Professor Albertini has published two books and numerous articles and reviews. She is currently working on a monograph of Charles de Bovelles and on a book in Islamic philosophy. She is the founder and president of"The International Charles de Bovelles Society.  Contact Information

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Roger T. Ames joined the Department as an Assistant Professor in 1978. He received his doctorate from the University of London and has spent many years abroad in China and Japan studying Chinese philosophy. He has been Visiting Professor at National Taiwan University, Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Peking University, a fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, and has lectured extensively at various universities around the world. Professor Ames has been the recipient of many grants and awards, including the Regent's Medal for Excellence in Teaching (1990-91), Regent's Medal for Excellence in Research (2012-13), and many grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Professor Ames has authored, edited, and translated some 30 books, and has written numerous book chapters and articles in professional journals. He was the subject editor for the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean entries in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Currently he continues to work on interpretive studies and explicitly "philosophical" translations of the core classical texts, taking full advantage in his research of the exciting new archaeological finds. Contact Information CV Office Hours

Professor Bontekoe received his doctorate from the University of Toronto in 1988. He spent two years teaching philosophy at the Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto before joining the Department here in 1990. His primary interests include hermeneutics, ethics, the philosophy of law, and the philosophy of science. Professor Bontekoe is the author of two books--one on hermeneutics and the other on dignity. He is also the co-editor of two anthologies. He is currently working on a project dealing with the ethical implications of evolutionary biology.

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Professor Chakrabarti received his doctorate from Oxford University, England in 1982. From 1983 to 1988 he was a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Calcutta, India. Between 1988 and 1992 he held the Spalding Visiting Fellowship at Wolfson College, Oxford, a Fellowship at the Institute of Advanced Study at Edinburgh, Jacobsen Fellowship and tutorship at University College London and a Visiting Assistant Professorship at the University of Washington, Seattle. After being trained as an analytic philosopher of language at Oxford, Professor Chakrabarti has spent several years receiving traditional training in Indian logic (Navya Nyaya) and metaphysics which made him fluent in Sanskrit. Before coming to Hawaii in 1997, he was a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Delhi, India. Professor Chakrabarti has edited or authored four books and has published numerous articles and reviews. He is currently working on a book on moral psychology. Contact Information Office Hours

A senior member of the Department since 1963, Professor Cheng has become an internationally well-known  scholar-philosopher in Chinese philosophy and comparative philosophy. With a broad and deep background in the traditions of classical Chinese philosophy and Neo-Confucianism, he received his doctorate from Harvard University in the field of analytical philosophy and logic. He has received fellowships and grants from the National Science Foundation, the Pacific Cultural Foundation, the Stanford Institute in the Philosophy of Science, and the Fulbright Foundation. He has lectured worldwide in both Europe (Oxford, Berlin TU, and Scandevia Countries) China (Beida, Tsinghua and Renda) and has received numerous honorary titles as honorary professor and university fellow. He is the founding president and now also the honorary president of the International Society of Chinese philosophy. He also founded and serves as president of the International Society for Yijing Studies. Cheng founded the Journal of Chinese Philosophy in 1972 and has edited the Journal since then. For his important work in modernization and globalization of Chinese philosophy, he has received an Honorary Doctorate from the Far Eastern Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1995. Professor Cheng has authored and edited 21 books and over 250 articles in Western, Chinese, and comparative philosophy. He is currently working on a book on ontology in relation to onto-hermeneutics and a book on Kant and Confucianism. Contact Information CV Office Hours

Professor Dalmiya received her doctorate from Brown University in 1988 following an undergraduate education in India. She taught at Montana State University from 1988 to 1993 and has been a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle. Professor Dalmiya joined the Department in 1998 from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. She has received several research grants and has published in a range of journals. She is currently working on several projects within her areas of interest. Contact Information.

Masato Ishida received his academic training in Japan, Canada, and the United States. He joined the department in 2009 after completing his PhD in philosophy at the Pennsylvania State University. His specialization includes classical American philosophy, history and philosophy of logic, and traditional Japanese philosophy. Contact Information Office Hours

After completing a Ph.D. in Comparative Philosophy at the University of Hawaii, Dr. Jackson worked in the Culture Learning Institute at the East-West Center where he played an important role in founding the Hawaii International Film Festival. In 1983 his interest in the possibilities of engaging in philosophical thinking with young children brought him back to the Philosophy Department, where his focus has been on establishing philosophy as a recognized, essential part of the K-12 school curriculum. Since 1984 he has served as Director of the Philosophy in the Schools Project, working with public school teachers and their students, assisting them in learning how to nurture philosophical inquiry in their classrooms. His work as director has taken him to Austria, Brazil, Australia, Singapore, Nanjing, Beijing, and Jiaozuo, China, and most recently to Japan where he works with kindergarten, elementary, intermediate, and high school students and conducts workshops with their teachers, who are eager to learn how to facilitate philosophical inquires with their students. With generous support from the Uehiro Foundation in Japan and other generous donors, plans are underway to establish a p4c Hawaii Center which will coordinate local as well as national and international initiatives.  In addition, efforts are underway to start an MA program in p4c and hopefully in the not too distant future a Ph.D. program as well. Contact information CV Office Hours

Professor Kipnis has been a member of the Department since 1979, having previously taught at Lake Forest College and Purdue University. He received his doctorate from Brandeis University and his M.A. from the University of Chicago where he also studied law. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions and a Humanist-Resident at the Department of Pediatrics at Kapiolani Women's and Children's Hospital in Honolulu, a project funded by the Hawaii Committee for the Humanities and other local foundations. He has also been a Humanist in-Residence at the G. N. Wilcox Memorial Hospital on Kauai. Professor Kipnis was instrumental in developing a code of ethics for the National Association for the Education of Young Children, a 60,000-member professional association of pre-school educators. He currently serves as the Executive Director of the International Association for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy (AMINTAPHIL). He has published works on property rights and on legal ethics. A recent paper on the surgical treatment of intersexuality received the GIRES award for research on gender identity. Professor Kipnis is currently doing work on blackmail and on ethics in prison health care. Contact information CV

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Professor Odin teaches Japanese and Comparative philosophy. He has spent seven years studying in Japan and one year in India. In addition to his years teaching at University of Hawaii he has been a Visiting Professor at Boston University, Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, and Tokyo University in Tokyo, Japan.  His most recent grants for research in Japan include NEH, Japan Foundation, and two Fulbrights. Professor Odin has published three books, his most recent works entitled The Social Self in Zen and American Pragmatism (1996), and Artistic Detachment in Japan and the West, and approximately 55 articles in Comparative Philosophy. Contact Information CV Office Hours

Professor Raghunathan received her doctorate from Harvard University in 2010. Her primary areas of focus include Indian Buddhist Philosophy, Indian Philosophy and Ancient Greek Philosophy. She is interested in questions concerning epistemology, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of action. Contact Information Office Hours

Joseph J. Tanke earned his Ph.D. at Boston College in 2007.  He has lectured and published extensively on Continental philosophy, the history of philosophy, politics, and aesthetics.  He is the author of Foucault’s Philosophy of Art: A Genealogy of Modernity (Continuum, 2009) and Jacques Rancière: An Introduction—Philosophy, Politics, and Aesthetics (Continuum, 2011). Additionally, Professor Tanke is currently completing a major new anthology of aesthetic philosophy, The Continuum Anthology of Aesthetics, and is conducting research in historical ontology and the philosophy of pain. Contact Information Office Hours and Current Courses

George Tsai joined the department in 2012. He did his graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D. 2011), where he wrote a dissertation under the supervision of Hans Sluga, R. Jay Wallace, and Kinch Hoekstra. He was an undergraduate at Amherst College, where he received the B.A. degree in 2002. His main interests lie in ethics, political philosophy, and moral psychology. He also has an interest in Chinese philosophy and comparative philosophy. His current research focuses on questions concerning liberalism, political legitimacy, human agency, moral emotions, and interpersonal relationships. His publications include "An Error Theory for Liberal Universalism" (The Journal of Political Philosophy, forthcoming) and "Lamentable Necessities" (The Review of Metaphysics, forthcoming).