Born in Argentina and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Juan De Pascuale has been on the Kenyon faculty since 1984. Prior to arriving at Kenyon he taught for three years at Brown University and for four years at the University of Notre Dame. In 1994 he was honored with the Trustee Award for Distinguished Teaching; in 1995 he was recognized by the American Philosophical Association for Excellence in Teaching of Philosophy; in 2000 he received the Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award; and in 2008 he received the Alpha Delta Phi Great Teacher Award. In 2001 he was chosen by that year's senior class to deliver the Baccalaureate Address, which he titled, "The Wonder of it All."
De Pascuale's scholarly and teaching interests are broad, embracing existentialism and phenomenology, philosophy of art, philosophy of religion, Zen Buddhist philosophy and Roman and Hellenistic philosophy. For many years his scholarly attention has been focused on the work of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Heidegger with an eye on using the work of these thinkers to re-envision philosophy as a way of life rather than as a detached academic discipline.
De Pascuale has served on the Committee on Hispanics in Philosophy of the American Philosophical Association, as Chair of the Philosophy Review Panel for the Ford Foundation Fellowship Program and was a visiting professor of philosophy at the University of Louvain. He served the College as chair of the philosophy department for fourteen years and as advisor to A.D.E.L.A.N.T.E, Kenyon's Hispanic student organization which he founded in 1986 with a group of students. He currently serves the greater community as a member of the Board of Trustees of Knox Community Hospital. He is married to Carola Sanz, a sociologist specializing on the impact of development in Latin American. They have four children, Sebastian, Anthony, Sophia (Kenyon class of 2017) and Veronica.
Areas of Expertise
Existentialism and phenomenology, Zen Buddhism, philosophy of art and philosophy of religion, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Heidegger.
Education
1987 — Doctor of Philosophy from Brown University
1981 — Master of Philosophy from Louvain University, Belgium
1980 — Master of Arts from Brown University
1973 — Bachelor of Arts from Queens College New York
Courses Recently Taught
America is the great, ongoing experiment of modernity, a nation thoroughly structured by all that is considered new in the Western world: liberal democracy, science, technology, industry and capitalism. The colonization of America by Europe led to the status of the United States as a laboratory for political, social and artistic theories which otherwise may never have been attempted. At the same time, the rest of the world has often looked at the United States from a critical, even adversarial perspective. As recent history has shown, America is not just a European obsession, but increasingly finds itself today in a multilateral geopolitical environment. The Sept. 11 attacks were a brutal awakening for many Americans to the hostility that exists in parts of the world against U.S. foreign policy, and against the identity of American citizens. Is such hostility related to the European ambivalence toward America, or is it an entirely new phenomenon, with separate historical and intellectual roots? What new insights do the critiques from non-European regions contribute to an understanding of America’s relationship to the rest of the world? Each week, we will examine texts that center on a particular theme of European-American intellectual relations, the emerging and complex relationship between Islam and America, the longstanding tension with Latin America, and critiques of American-style modernity from Japan. Among the European texts studied are works by Bartolomé de las Casas, Alexis de Tocqueville, Friedrich Nietzsche, Simone de Beauvoir, and Jean Baudrillard. Middle Eastern authors include Osama bin Laden, Jalal Al-i Ahmad, and Sayyid Qutb. Among the Latin American authors are Fidel Castro, Eduardo Galeano, and Che Guevara. From Japan, they include Keiji Nishitani and Shunya Yoshimi. We also will view and discuss several films by directors such as Godfrey Reggio and Adam Curtis. This counts toward the major in French (track II or track III) when pre-arranged with Professor Guiney. This counts toward an elective for the political science major. No prerequisite. This interdisciplinary course does not count toward the completion of any diversification requirement.
Existentialism is one of the most influential philosophical movements in modern culture. Unlike other recent philosophies, its impact extends far beyond the cloistered walls of academia into literature (Beckett, Kafka, Ionesco), art (Giacometti, Bacon, Dadaism), theology (Tillich, Rahner, Buber) and psychology. Existentialism is at once an expression of humanity's continual struggle with the perennial problems of philosophy (knowledge, truth, meaning, value) and a particularly modern response to the social and spiritual conditions of our times (alienation, anomie, meaninglessness). In this course we will study existentialism in its complete form as a cultural and philosophical movement. After uncovering the historical context from which this movement emerged, we will view the "existential" paintings of de Chirico and Munch; read the fiction of Kafka, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Beckett; and closely study the thought of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre. Among the topics we shall examine are alienation, authenticity, self-knowledge, belief in God, the nature of value and the meaning of life. This counts toward the philosophical schools and periods requirement for the major. PHIL 100 or RLST 101 is recommended. No prerequisite. Offered every year.
This course presents an inquiry into the nature of claims associated with religious traditions and the validity, if any, of such claims in the contemporary context. Topics to be studied include modern critiques of religious claims, proofs and practices as irrational and/or related to oppression; the classical "proofs" of the existence of God; the relation between religion and science, including questions about the nature of religious language and how religious claims might be verified; the religious (and secular) understanding of suffering, death, and evil; the possibility of justifying religious claims on the basis of religious experiences; and the question of how religious claims might be understood as valid, given the differing claims of different religions. This counts toward the metaphysical requirement for the major. No prerequisite. Offered every other year.
This course is a seminar focused on salient existential themes as explored in film, art and literature. This is not a course in the philosophy of film, art and literature, but rather a course in which we try to philosophize through the viewing of films and works of art, and through reading and discussing works of literature. Works of art are capable of conveying aspects of issues that discursive texts cannot, especially intimate human issues. The course will center on fundamental and perennial existential human concerns that have been explored throughout history but especially in the last two centuries: alienation, the “death of God” / the absence of God, nihilism and the threat of “meaninglessness,” the quest for authenticity in mass society, the prospects of love and hope in the modern world. We will view films directed by Charlie Chaplin, Godfrey Reggio, Louis Malle, Werner Herzog, Terry Gilliam, Martin Scorsese, Ingmar Bergman, Sidney Lumet, Akira Kurosawa, Mia Hansen-Love and others. No prerequisite.
Nietzsche is a disturbing presence in the modern world. In a series of beautifully written books that are at once profound, elusive, enigmatic and shocking, Nietzsche does nothing less than challenge our most precious and fundamental beliefs: the idea of truth, the existence of God, the objectivity of moral values and the intrinsic value of the human being. As a critic of both the Western metaphysical tradition and the Judeo-Christian religion, Nietzsche may well be the most controversial thinker in the entire history of philosophy. In this seminar we will submit some of Nietzsche's most important books to a close, critical reading in an effort to come to terms, so far as this is possible, with his mature thought. We will examine his most famous yet perplexing views &emdash; the death of God, will to power, the Übermensch, nihilism, perspectivism, the eternal recurrence &emdash; as they are developed in "Untimely Meditations," "Twilight of Idols," "Genealogy of Morals," "Beyond Good and Evil," and selections from "Will to Power." This counts toward the great thinkers requirement for the major. Prerequisite: any philosophy course or permission of the instructor. Offered every third year.
Often regarded as the originator of existential inquiry, Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) wrote captivating poetic and philosophical literature concerning human existence. Taking the human hunger for meaning as his point of departure, Kierkegaard examined the rational and emotional depths of human life in its aesthetic, moral, and religious modes of expression. In this course we will read a large part of what Kierkegaard called "my authorship" in order to understand his way of doing philosophy and to examine his portrayal of the spiritual landscape. Kierkegaard's probings into the value dimensions of life — for example, happiness, pleasure, boredom, despair, choice, duty, commitment, anxiety, guilt, remorse, hope, faith, love — encourage his readers to think about their own lives and their relations with others. In examining Kierkegaard's ideas, therefore, the student should expect to be challenged personally as well as intellectually. This counts toward the great thinkers requirement for the major. Prerequisite: any philosophy course or permission of instructor. Offered every third year.
