Department of English

About Drew Dalton

Drew M. Dalton received his Ph.D. in 2006 from the University of Leuven (BE) in conjunction with the Husserl Archives and the Center for Social and Political Philosophy. Before joining the Department of English at Indiana University, Dalton was a Professor of Philosophy at Dominican University.

Dalton’s research interests are primarily in literary theory, ethics, social and political philosophy, and aesthetics. More narrowly, his work focuses on how questions of good, evil, truth, and beauty can be addressed through the critical lenses of Phenomenology, German Idealism, Pessimism, Speculative Materialism, and Psychoanalysis.

His first book, Longing for the Other: Levinas and Metaphysical Desire (Duquesne University Press, 2009), integrated these interests through an analysis of the ethical, social, and political implications of Emmanuel Levinas' account of desire. His next book, The Ethics of Resistance: Tyranny of the Absolute (Bloomsbury, 2018), expanded this work by interrogating the role of the idea of the absolute in ethical, social, and political reasoning. In 2023, Dalton published The Matter of Evil: From Speculative Realism to Ethical Pessimism (Northwestern University Press, 2023) which extended his examination of the ethical and socio-political functions of the idea of the absolute into the realm of metaphysics by probing the implications of contemporary scientific research to contemporary philosophy, paying particular attention to the possible role entropy might play in metaphysical speculation and ethical and aesthetic evaluation. Dalton is currently working on his fourth monograph which will explore the roots of our aesthetic sensibilities through the lens of pessimistic philosophy. In this work, Dalton hopes to reveal the of role escapist fantasies in the formation of our conceptions of goodness and beauty. In this way, he hopes to trace a link between our “high” artistic and literary values and our “low” pop-culture appetites.

In addition to these longer works, Dalton has published a number of shorter works in various philosophical and interdisciplinary journals including Philosophy Today, Angelaki, The Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, The Journal of Aesthetics and Culture, Epoché, Phenomenological Inquiry, Idealistic Studies, Studia Phaenomenologica, Open Philosophy, and Janus Head. Outside of his professional interests, Dalton is an amateur jazz guitarist and an avid middle to long distance runner who harbors an abiding love for modern architecture, vintage stereo equipment, oatmeal cookies, and the Marx Brothers.