Alexander Haitos is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Ashoka University. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from Texas A&M University in August 2018. His research interests span the history of western philosophy, with a focus on metaphysics, process philosophy, and the philosophy of art.
Currently, his research focuses on American philosophy and metaphysics, especially their intersection in William James’s radical empiricism and the organic, processual philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. The goal of his work is to develop this decisive turn in the history of metaphysics with respect to its implications for the existential and social dimensions of life. He contends that the deeply important and complicated metaphysics of Whitehead is best understood through James’s radical empiricism and Whitehead’s own ideas about aesthetics. Indeed, Whitehead’s metaphysics and aesthetics converge to produce rich nectar with an existential bite for myriad areas of human endeavor and inquiry, including education, scientific thought, and political practice. He conceives of this project as an integrative and rehabilitative endeavor whereby Whitehead’s philosophical contributions are brought into productive conversation with those of his American and European predecessors and contemporaries, as well as with the concerns and thinkers of our own times, including the Continental philosophical traditions and Science and Technology Studies. This vein of inquiry remains overlooked in most corners of academic philosophy, and so his aim in pursuing it is to expand the range and applicability of James’s and especially Whitehead’s insights within and beyond the discipline of philosophy.
