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Richard Fincham

  • Position: Associate Professor
  • Department: Department of Philosophy
  • Email: [email protected]
Brief Biography

Richard Fincham received his BA, MA, with distinction, and PhD from the University of Warwick. He was also a DAAD Stipendiat at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, in 2000 - 2001. Prior to joining The American University in Cairo (AUC), he taught philosophy at both the University of Greenwich and the University of Warwick. He has previously served as graduate program director and chair in the Department of Philosophy.

Fincham specializes in Kant and 19th-century German philosophy. He is currently working on a project under the working title, Transcendental Idealism and Humean Skepticism, which will eventually give rise to a two-volume monograph. The first volume seeks to provide a definitive interpretation of the manner in which Hume’s skepticism and naturalism influenced Kant in both his pre-critical and critical periods. The volume discusses how Kant first appropriated such skepticism within the 1760s, only to then react against such positions within the 1770s and beyond. In so doing, it strives to provide a comprehensive and systematic account of the genesis of Kantian transcendental philosophy, as well as a rigorous philosophical assessment of Kant’s claims to have undermined and usurped skepticism and naturalism within the theoretical and practical philosophy espoused throughout the 1780s. The second volume provides a detailed account of the reception of Kant’s transcendental philosophy within the first twenty-five years following its appearance. It focuses on how Kant’s attempts to silence the skeptic and naturalist were subjected to intense scrutiny by figures inspired by Hume (such as Jacobi, Maimon and Schulze-Aenesidemus) and how the attempts of the “friends” of the critical philosophy (such as Reinhold and Fichte) to inoculate transcendental philosophy against any such skeptical objection eventually gave rise to the foundationalist projects characterizing German Idealism. In addition to a historical account of these developments, the volume provides a more systematic discussion of the legitimacy of the criticisms to which Kant’s answers to the skeptic were subject, as well as an assessment of whether German Idealism marks either an advance upon Kantian transcendental philosophy or a retreat into uncritical dogmatic metaphysics.

He is also the English translator of Claus Dierksmeier, Qualitative Freiheit: Selbstbestimmung in weltbürgerlicher Verantwortung (transcript Verlag, 2016). 

  • Fincham, Richard M. A Review of the Foundation of the Unconscious by Matt Ffytche & The Dark Ground of Spirit by S. J. McGrath,"Plurilogue Vol. 6 No. 1 (2017), pp.21-25.
  • Fincham, Richard M. Reconciling Leibnizian Monadology and Kantian Criticism. British Journal for the History of Philosophy Vol. 23 No. 6 (2016), pp.1033-1055.
  • Fincham, Richard M. A Review of the Romantic Absolute: Being and Knowing in Early German Romantic Philosophy, 1795-1804 by Dalia Nassar," Dennis Schulting, ed. Critique (2015).
  • Fincham, Richard M. A Review of the Usefulness of the Kantian Philosophy: How Karl Leonhard Reinhold's Commitment to Enlightenment Influenced His Reception of Kant by Karianne J. Marx, Plurilogue Vol. 2 No. 1 (2012), pp.13-16.
  • Fincham, Richard M. A Review of the Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy: A Systematic Reconstruction by Eckart Förster, Plurilogue Vol. 2 No. 1 (2012), pp.9-12.
  • Fincham, Richard M. First Responses to the Critique of Pure Reason: The 1780s and Later. In The Continuum Companion to Kant, Gary Banham, Dennis Schulting and Nigel Hems, eds. London: Continuum, 2012, pp. 281-289.
  • Fincham, Richard M. Humanistic Values in German Idealism. In Humanistic Ethics in the Age of Globality, Claus Dierksmeier, Wolfgang Amann, Ernst Von Kimakowitz, Heiko Spitzeck and Michael Pirson, eds. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp. 94-117.
  • Fincham, Richard M. Transcendental Idealism and the Problem of the External World. Journal of the History of Philosophy, Vol. 49, No. 2 (April 2011), pp. 221-241.
  • Fincham, Richard M. Kant’s Early Critics: Jacobi, Reinhold, Maimon. In The History of Continental Philosophy: Vol. I: Kant, Kantianism, and Idealism: The Origins of Continental Philosophy, Tom Nenon and Alan Schrift, eds. Durham: Acumen, 2010, pp. 49–82. (Refereed)
  • Fincham, Richard M. Schelling’s Subversion of Fichtean Monism, 1794-1796. In Fichte-Studien Supplementa: Fichte, German Idealism and Early Romanticism, Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore, eds. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2010, pp. 149–163. 
  • Fincham, Richard M. Hölderlin and Novalis: Re-appropriating the Reflection Model of Self-Consciousness. Proceedings of the Twenty-first World Congress of Philosophy, Vol. 10, Pinar Canevi and Stephen Voss, eds. Ankara: Philosophical Society of Turkey, 2007, pp. 183-188
  • Fincham, Richard M. Refuting Fichte with ‘Common Sense’: Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer’s Reception of the Wissenschaftslehre 1794/5Journal of the History of Philosophy, Vol. 43, No. 3 (July 2005), pp. 301-324. (Refereed)
  • Fincham, Richard M. The Impact of Aenesidemus upon Fichte and Schopenhauer. Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, Vol.10 (2000), pp. 96-126.