Associate Professor Matthew Sharpe

Lecturer, researcher
School of Philosophy, Faculty of Theology and Philosophy

Matthew Sharpe

Areas of expertise: ancient philosophy; philosophy as a way of life; history of ideas; francis bacon; michel de montaigne; enlightenment philosophy; psychoanalytic theory; critical theory; continental philosophy; ideas of the far right

Email: matthew.sharpe@acu.edu.au

HDR Supervisor accreditation status: Full

ORCID ID: 0000-0002-8165-5775

Matthew Sharpe is the author of The Other Enlightenment (2023) and Camus, Philosophe (2014, 2015), and coauthor of Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions (2021) and Zizek and Politics (2010). He has taught and supervised philosophy for over two decades, and is the author of numerous articles in the history of ideas, classical receptions, critical and psychoanalytic theory, continental theory, and Stoic thought. These articles have appeared in leading journals such as Journal of the History of Philosophy, Journal of History of Philosophy, Telos, Philosophy & Rhetoric, Psychoanalysis, Culture, & Society, Journal of Early Modern Studies, Philosophy & Literature, Review of Politics, Thesis Eleven, Political Theory, Continental Philosophy Review, Philosophical Papers, Sophia, Poetics Today, Philosophy & Social Criticism, Philosophy Today, Critical Horizons, New Formations, The European Legacy, Angelaki, Law & Critique. He has also written extensively for The Conversation, and was awarded the 2022 Australasian Association of Philosophy media award. Associate Professor Sharpe is also actively involved in the modern Stoic community, speaking at Stoicon events, writing for popular magazines, and coorganising the Australian Stoicon-X events.

View academia profile

Select publications

  1. The Other Enlightenment: Self-Estrangement, Race, and Gender, Rowman & Littlefield, 2023.
  2. With R. Nolan, "A Process-Based Approach to Health-Related Quality of Life as a "Way of Living", Quality of Life Research (2023) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jep.13902.
  3. "Not Beyond Politics: The Metapolitical Dimensions of Nietzsche's Anti-Democratism in Beyond Good and Evil", in Matthew McManus ed., Nietzsche and the Politics of Reaction Essays on Liberalism, Socialism, and Aristocratic Radicalism (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2023).
  4. Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions (with M. Ure), Bloomsbury, 2021.
  5. Editor and co-translator (with F. Testa), Pierre Hadot: Selected Essays, Bloomsbury, 2020.
  6. Camus, Philosophe, Brill, 2015; paperback 2016.
  7. Žižek and Politics: A Critical Introduction (with Geoff Boucher), Edinburgh University Press, 2010.
  8. "Giving the Angel the Benefit of Law: Natural Law and Human Dignity in Franz Neumann and Ernst Bloch". Critical Research on Religion 10, no. 3 (2022): 351-356. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/20503032221124559?ai=1gvoi&mi=3ricys&af=R.
  9. With K. Turner, "Wittgenstein's Unglauben: Jacques Lacan and the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus", Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society (2022): 201-217. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41282-022-00281-5.
  10. "Unifying, Comparative, Critical and Metacritical: Domenico Losurdo's Nietzsche as Aristocratic Rebel". Critical Horizons 23, no. 3 (2022): 284-304. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14409917.2022.2100978?journalCode=ycrh20.
  11. With M. Stettler, "Pushing against an open door: Agamben on Hadot and Foucault". Classical Receptions 14, no. 1 (2022): 120-139. https://academic.oup.com/crj/article-abstract/14/1/120/6298435.
  12. "Legado de um Philosophe: O Senece de Diderot: Entre Hypomnemata e Exercicios Espeirituais", in F. Testa & M. Faustino eds., Filosofia com modo de vida (Ensaios Escolhidos, 2022).
  13. "Humanism and Philosophy as a Way of Life", in E. Kramer et al eds., Philosophy of Culture as Theory, Method, and Way of Life: Contemporary Reflections and Applications (Brill, 2022).
  14. "Purloined Letters-Lacan avec Strauss", in J. Bernstein & J. Schiff, Leo Strauss and Contemporary Thought: Reading Strauss Outside the Lines (Suny, 2021).
  15. "Between too Intellectualist and not Intellectualist Enough: Hadot's Spiritual Exercises and Annas' Virtues as Skills", Journal of Value Inquiry 55, no. 2 (2021): 269-287. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10790-021-09815-z
  16. "Speaking of Heidegger's Silence. Critical Responses to Knowles's Heidegger". Heidegger-Jahrbuch 13 (2021): 76-92.
  17. "Golden Calf: Reading Deleuze's Nietzsche in the Time of Trump", Thesis Eleven 163, no. 1 (2021): 71-88. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/07255136211005990.
  18. "A Disturbance of Vision on the Capitol: Philosophy and the Far-Right-Towards an Interdisciplinary Inquiry", Thesis Eleven 163, no. 1 (2021): 5-28. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/07255136211012615?journalCode=thea
  19. "On Politics, Irony, and Plato's Socrates as Derrida's Pharmakon", Review of Politics 83, no. 2 (2021): 1-21. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/review-of-politics/article/abs/on-politics-irony-and-platos-socrates-as-derridas-pharmakon/975D4E7F7BEE3345981EA9C963643806.
  20. "Pierre Hadot, Albert Camus and the Orphic View of Nature", Continental Philosophy Review 54, no. 1 (2021): 17-39. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11007-020-09520-x.
  21. "Solitaire/Solidaire: Camus, Contemplation, and the Vita Mixta", Telos 196 (2021): 31-43. http://journal.telospress.com/content/2021/196/31.short.
  22. "In the Crosshairs of the Fourfold: Critical Thoughts on Aleksandr Dugin's Heidegger", Critical Horizons 21, no. 2 (2020): 167-187. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14409917.2020.1759284?journalCode=ycrh20.
  23. With P. Francev & M. Kaluza, "Camus as Philosopher amongst the Philosophers", in Brill's Companion to Camus ed. M. Sharpe et al (Brill, 2020).
  24. 24. "Modern Rebellion before the Terror: Reading Diderot after Camus", in Brill's Companion to Camus ed. M. Sharpe et al (Brill, 2020).
  25. "Pierre Hadot: Stoicism as a Way of Life", in K. Lampe & J. Sholtz, French and Italian Stoicisms: From Sartre to Agamben (Bloomsbury, 2020).
  26. "From Amy Allen to Abbé Raynal: Critical Theory, Enlightenment, and Colonialism", Critical Horizons 20, no. 2 (2019): 1-22. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14409917.2019.1596220?journalCode=ycrh20.
  27. "Killing the Father, Parmenides: On Lacan's Anti-philosophy", Continental Philosophy Review 52, no. 1 (2019): 51-74. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11007-015-9330-8.
  28. "Home to Men's Business and Bosoms: Philosophy and Rhetoric in Francis Bacon's Essayes", British Journal for the History of Philosophy 27, no. 3 (2019): 492-512. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09608788.2018.1506315?journalCode=rbjh20.
  29. "Politicising the Transcendental Turn: Slavoj Zizek's Reading of Kant", in Zizek Studies, eds. David J. Gunkel & Paul A. Taylor (Peter Lang, 2019).
  30. "Purloined Letters: Lacan avec Strauss", in Jeffrey Bernstein and Jade Schiff eds. Leo Strauss in Conversation (SUNY, 2019/20).
  31. "Ideological Fantasy" (with Kirk Turner), in Yannis Stavrakakis ed., Routledge Handbook of Psychoanalytic Political Theory (Routledge, 2019).
  32. "Modern Rebellion, before the Terror: Reading Diderot after Camus", in M. Sharpe, P. Francev, & M. Kaluza eds. Camus and Philosophy (Brill, 2019).
  33. "Camus and Evil", in Thomas Nys ed. The Routledge Handbook of Evil (Routledge, 2019).
  34. With Kirk Turner, "Bibliopolitics: the History of Notation and the Birth of the Citational Academic Subject", Foucault studies 25 (2019): 146-173.
  35. "Wherewith to draw us Left and Right: Thoughts on reading Heidegger after 1998", in Gregory Fried and Richard Polt eds. Between Earth and Sky: Doing Philosophy with and against Heidegger (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019).
  36. "Towards a Phenomenology of Sagesse: The Unique Philosophical Problematic of Pierre Hadot", Angelaki 23, no. 2 (2018): 125-138. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0969725X.2018.1451475?journalCode=cang20.
  37. "The Topics Transformed: Rethinking Francis Bacon's Prerogative Instances", Journal of History of Philosophy 56, no, 3 (2018): 429-454. https://dro.deakin.edu.au/articles/journal_contribution/The_topics_transformed_reframing_the_Baconian_prerogative_instances/20798692.
  38. "Reading Heidegger-After the 'Heidegger Case'?", Critical Horizons 19, no. 4 (2018):334-360.
  39. "Rhetorical Action in the Rektoratsrede", Philosophy & Rhetoric 51, no. 2 (2018): 176-201. https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/psup/p-n-r/article-abstract/51/2/176/200293/Rhetorical-Action-in-Rektoratsrede-Calling?redirectedFrom=fulltext.
  40. "Postmodern Applied Epistemology: The End of Grand Narratives?" in David Coady and James Chase ed. The Routledge Handbook of Applied Epistemology (Routledge, 2018).
  41. "Camus and Forgiveness", in M. La Caze ed. Phenomenology of Forgiveness (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018).
  42. "Francis Bacon", in Stephen Gaukroger ed., Knowledge in Early Modern Philosophy (Bloomsbury, 2018), 7-26.
  43. "The State as the Being of the Volk (on Heidegger's 1934-35 Hegel)", in Thanos Zartaloudis ed. Law and Philosophy: Critical Intersections (Lexington, 2018).
  44. "Cultivating the Other: On Ilsetraut Hadot's Seneca", in Matthew Dennis et al eds. Ethical Self-Cultivation: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Routledge, 2018).
  45. "On a Forgotten Argument in French Philosophy: Sceptical Humanism in Montaigne, Voltaire, Camus," Critical Horizons 16, no. 1 (2015): 1-26. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/1440991714Z.00000000038.
  46. "It's Not the Chrysippus You Read: Epictetus and Hadot Contra Cooper on Philosophy as a Way of Life," Philosophy Today 58, no. 3 (2014): 367-392. https://www.pdcnet.org/philtoday/content/philtoday_2014_0058_0003_0367_0392.
  47. "Georgics of the Mind and the Architecture of Fortune: Francis Bacon's Philosophical Therapeutics," Philosophical Papers 43, no. 1 (2014): 89-121. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/05568641.2014.901697.
  48. "Reading Leo Strauss' On Plato's Symposium: The Poetic Presentation of Philosophy", Poetics Today 34, no. 4 (2013-2014): 563-603. https://read.dukeupress.edu/poetics-today/article-abstract/34/4/563/21103/The-Poetic-Presentation-of-Philosophy-Leo-Strauss.
  49. "The Aesthetics of Ideology, or 'the Critique of Ideological Judgment' in Eagleton and Zizek", Political Theory 34 (2006): 95-120.

Projects

  • 2022-24: EU grant "Mapping Philosophy as a Way of Life: An Ancient Model, A Contemporary Approach" (2022.02833.PTDC), led by M. Faustino, IFILNOVA (Nova Institute of Philosophy, New University of Lisbon.
  • 2014-19: ARC Discovery Grant "Reinventing Philosophy as a Way of Life", led by Michael Ure (Monash) and Keith Ansell-Pearson (Warwick), 2014-2018.
  • 2012-17: ARC Discovery Grant "Religion and Political Thought" Discovery Grant, led by Marion Maddox (Macquarie) and Roland Boer (Newcastle), 2012-2017.

Accolades and Awards

  • 2022: Australasian Association of Philosophy (AAP) media award
  • 2022 Excellence in Research Supervision and Training Award, Deakin University.
  • 2008, 2010, 2018, 2019: Faculty and School teaching excellence commendations, Deakin University.
  • 2010, 2011: Faculty Researcher of the year award, B-C Levels, Deakin University.
  • 1999-2002: Australian Research Award Scholarship (PhD).

Appointments and Affiliations

  • Associate Professor of Philosophy, ACU

Editorial roles

  • Series editor, Brill, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Texts and Studies (2021-)
  • Series editor, Edinburgh University Press, Thinkers and Politics series (2010-).
  • Editorial board, Journal of Camus Studies, 2017-.

Public engagement activities

  • Author: The Conversation, 2014-
  • Coorganiser: Australian Stoicon-X events, 2021-.
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