Roey Reichert

Roey Reichert

Job Candidate

Office: 3374 Bunche Hall

Email: rreichert@ucla.edu

Biography

Roey is a doctoral candidate at the political science department at UCLA. His dissertation examines the conceptual relationship between nationalism and cosmopolitanism in Kant’s political thought and argues that it must be understood within the wider context of Kant’s philosophical anthropology. In addition to the political and anthropological thought of the German Enlightenment, his other interests include theories of nationalism and modernity, as well as the social philosophy of Ernest Gellner. He is currently (2021/2) a DAAD doctoral research fellow at the Interdisciplinary Center for Enlightenment Studies (IZEA), at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, Germany.

Education

M.A., Political Science, Magna Cum Laude, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2013)
B.A., Political Science and Philosophy, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2010)

Research Interests

Dissertation Title: Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism in the German Enlightenment: The Anthropological Foundations of Kant’s Political Thought

Description: The dissertation examines Kant’s conceptual relationship of nationalism and cosmopolitanism. Rather than focusing on these concepts in isolation, the object of this study is to examine how he viewed the tension between the two–and how he sought to resolve it. The dissertation argues that this relationship must be understood against the background of Kant’s philosophical anthropology, as well as his engagement with the Popularphilosophie intellectual movement.

Thus, it aims to accomplish three goals: The first is to uncover different ways in which the relations between nationalism and cosmopolitanism were conceptualized in the past. Second, by gleaning historical insights from an intellectual landscape of an era not dissimilar to our own, it aspires to add nuance to our own present political predicament–where nationalism and cosmopolitanism are commonly accepted as being antithetical to each other.

Finally, as part of a larger scholarly vision that endeavors to reintegrate philosophical anthropology into the foundations of political thought, the dissertation seeks to demonstrate how this approach deepens our understanding of intellectual history–while broadening the horizons of contemporary political theory as well.

Graduate Advisors

Anthony Pagden (Co-Chair)
Joshua Foa Dienstag (Co-Chair)
Davide Panagia
David D. Kim (Germanic Languages)