Kristi Sweet

Kristi Sweet’s research interests are principally in the work of Immanuel Kant, with emphasis on his practical philosophy, aesthetics, and his conception of philosophical system. She is interested in how Kant conceives of the unity of human life under the auspices of human freedom, and his concern to address our deepest need to be efficacious in the world.  Her first monograph was a systematic approach to Kant’s practical philosophy, tracing the ever-outward reach of freedom’s demand to transform the natural order. Kant on Practical Life: From Duty to History (Cambridge University Press, 2013) encompasses the range of Kant’s considerations of duty, the moral law, virtue, the state, religion, and history. Her second book, Kant on Freedom, Nature, and Judgment: The Territory of the third Critique (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), picks up where the first leaves off, and turns to the Critique of Judgment as offering an answer to how it may be possible that freedom has real effects in the world. In this, she comprehends the Critique of Judgment as unified under the systematic need for hope; the book treats in detail the Ideal of Beauty, genius and aesthetic ideas, the sensus communis, the meaning of ‘life,’ and the role of faith in Kant’s attempt to complete his critical system. She has also published essays on Kant’s ethics, political theory, and aesthetics in venues such as the Kantian Review, Epoché: a journal for the history of philosophy, Journal of Transcendental Philosophy, and Idealistic Studies. She has contributed to edited volumes on Kant’s work: Kant and the Feeling of Life (SUNY, forthcoming), Kant and the Faculty of Feeling (Cambridge University Press, 2018), and the Aesthetics, History, Politics, and Religion volume in the Kant and German Contemporaries series (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

She holds an honorary appointment as a Senior Researcher in the College of Fellows at Western Sydney University, and has been invited to give the Eugenio Donato Lectures in the Comparative Literature Department at the University at Buffalo. She has been a Visiting Teacher for a Summer Course at the University of Tilburg, a Fellow at Emory University’s Institute for the History of Philosophy, and her work has been supported by Texas A&M’s Glasscock Center for Humanities Research. Sweet and is currently serving as the Director of the 2022 Collegium Phaenomenologicum and is the local host of the 2022 meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy.

Her interest in Kant and the history of philosophy takes shape in support of and promotion of these areas more widely in the discipline. Sweet is a co-founder and Executive Co-Director of the History of Philosophy Society; convener of the Southern study group of the North American Kant Society; she serves on the board of the International Hermeneutics Symposium and has organized numerous conferences, symposia, and conference panels. She has been invited to the Editorial Boards of the Cycles history of philosophy series at Edinburgh University Press, the Journal of Continental Philosophy, and the Journal of Applied Hermeneutics.

Sweet teaches courses in a range of areas in the history of philosophy. At the graduate level, she teaches courses in Kant (each of the three critiques, as well as courses more broadly in his practical philosophy or idea of system), as well as on the ‘long’ Enlightenment, post-Kantian German Idealism, and the history of political philosophy. In addition to Introduction to Philosophy, she teaches undergraduate courses in Ancient Greek Philosophy, 19^th Century Philosophy, Philosophy of Art, and Social and Political Philosophy.

Educational Background

• B.A., Philosophy and Honors, Villanova University, 1998

• Ph.D., Philosophy, Loyola University Chicago, 2006

Scholarly Achievements

• Kant on Practical Life: From Duty to History (Cambridge University Press, 2013)

• Kant on Freedom, Nature, and Judgment: The Territory of the third Critique (Cambridge University Press, 2023)

• Schuwer Lecture at Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, 2023: “Interpretation and Truth in Kant’s Theory of Beauty”

• Keynote speaker at North Texas Philosophical Association, 2023: “Kant and the Politics of Lying”

• Keynote speaker at Southern study group of North American Kant Society, 2015: “Between Theory and Practice: Kant on Judgment”

• Eugenio Donato Endowed Lecture Series, University at Buffalo, 2019

Fall 2024 Class Schedule

• Phil 332.500 - Social & Political Philosophy. T, TH - 8:00-9:15 a.m. - YMCA 109.

Office Hours

• By Appointment