Benjamin Randolph

I am a philosopher with lots of interests, but they converge on one big question: What’s supposed to be different about “the modern age” compared to the past? To explore answers to this question, I inquire into the history of philosophy, social and political theory, and philosophy of religion. I am especially interested in how the Frankfurt School, their intellectual forebears, and their interlocutors conceive and challenge the idea of modernity. Relatedly, I think about what forms, or genres, of critique philosophers can use to renew and revise our historical self-understanding. Current projects include an essay pitting Habermas’s genealogical recovery of Christian philosophy against Alasdair MacIntyre’s, another on the distinctiveness of Adorno’s program for critical social theory, and another on the psychoanalytic assumptions underlying Dialectic of Enlightenment’s philosophical genre.