Roger S. Foster
Professor
Deputy Chairperson
Social Sciences, Human Services and Criminal Justice
EMAIL: rfoster@bmcc.cuny.edu
Office: N-651V
Office Hours:
Phone: +1 (212) 77-6989
Roger has been at BMCC since 2003. Roger’s teaching emphasizes the importance of critical thinking, and students’ own ability to think through problems for themselves. Roger believes that the most important thing about education is its role in creating self-a self awareness, that is to say, the experience of the conditions (social and otherwise) that makes us the kind of beings (as individuals and as members of a species) that we are.
Roger’s major research interest is the tradition of critical social theory associated with the Frankfurt School of Social Research. His Ph.D thesis attempted to reconstruct an Adornian version of critical social theory.
Roger Foster is the author of two books. His book, ‘Adorno: The Recovery of Experience’ was published in 2007 by SUNY Press. His second book, Adorno and Philosophical Modernism: The Inside of Things was published in 2016 by Lexington Books.
Expertise
Populism, Political Theory, Philosophy, Ethical Theory, Critical Thinking
Degrees
- B.A. University of East Anglia, U.K., Economics,1993
- M.A. University of York, U.K., English,1994
- Ph.D. University of Ottawa, Philosophy,2000
Courses Taught
- The study of philosophy helps students develop analytic skills and gain an appreciation of the general philosophical problems with which human beings have grappled throughout Western civilization. Basic philosophic problems such as free will and determinism, the criteria which justify ethical evaluations, the philosophical considerations which are relevant to belief or disbelief in God, and knowledge and illusion are examined during this course.
- In considering ethical positions ranging from animal rights to environmental philosophies of radical ecology, and studying the impact of new reproductive technologies and other biotechnologies on the (so-called) Third World, students learn about advances made by working scientists and feminist philosophers in contextualizing science and technology. A special attempt will be made to study cultural factors as class, gender, and race in order to understand the responsibilities of scientists and technologists for the uses of their knowledge; the ethics of scientific research; and truth and fraud in science and engineering.
- This course provides an in-depth discussion of some of the great issues of philosophy. It applies analytical and logical tools for clarification of these issues with emphasis on recent/contemporary philosophical developments. Using a cross-cultural perspective, there is a focus on select topics such as ethical codes and moral conduct, plolitcal order, social justice, religious experiences and beliefs, science and knowledge and the nature of consciousness. Prerequisite: PHI 100 or 110
Research and Projects
- Erich Fromm and the Psychic Wounds of Capitalism This project will involve a comprehensive critique of the current state of neoliberal and ethno-national Capitalism from the perspective of Fromm’s psychoanalytically and philosophically informed humanism.Website:http://www.researchgate.net/project/Erich-Fromm-and-the-Psychic-Wounds-of-Capitalism
- Adorno and Proust In his ‘Short Commentaries on Proust’, Adorno describes Proust as a Platonist whose resistance against the world of opinion comprised a ‘second alienation of the alienated world’. Adorno often describes the work of defamiliarization, in which the known and habitual is rendered unknown and alien, as central to the possibility of aesthetic experience. My paper will argue that this capacity to defamiliarize experience is crucial to Marcel Proust’s literary technique. I argue, further, that this idea, and the manner in which Proust executes it in La Recherche, is in fact key to Adorno’s understanding of how artworks are able to take up a critical perspective in relation to society. Drawing on De Beistigui’s (2007) interpretation of metaphor in Proust, and Anne Henry’s (2000) discussion of Proust and Schopenhauer, I argue that an appreciation of Proust’s aesthetic project enables us to make sense of several core concepts in Adorno’s aesthetics, including the idea of convulsion (Erschütterung) and the contrast between aesthetic happiness (Glück) and pleasure.
Publications
- Strategies of Justice: The Project of Philosophy in Lyotard and Habermas (1999), Philosophy and Social Criticism
- Adorno and Proust on the Recovery of Experience (2007), Critical Horizons
- Adorno: The Recovery of Experience (2007), State University of New York Press
- Adorno and Heidegger on Language and the Inexpressible (2007), Continental Philosophy Review
- Adorno on Kafka: Interpreting the Grimace on the Face of Truth (2013), New German Critique
- The Catastrophe of Neoliberalism: Finance, Emancipation, Disintegration, Philosophy and Social Criticism
- Social Character: Erich Fromm and the Ideological Glue of Neoliberalism (2017), Critical Horizons
- Adorno and Philosophical Modernism: The Inside of Things, Lexington Books
- Lingering with the Particular: Minima Moralia’s Critical Modernism (2011), Telos
- Freedom’s Right: Critical Social Theory and the Challenge of Neoliberalism (2016), Capital and Class
- Therapeutic Culture, Authenticity, and Neoliberalism (2016), History of the Human Sciences
- Resistance and Recognition: Axel Honneth and Critical Social Theory (1999), Radical Philosophy
- An Adornian Theory of Recognition? A Critical Response to Axel Honneth (2011), International Journal of Philosophical Studies
- The Therapeutic Spirit of Neoliberalism (2016), Political Theory
- Adorno: The Recovery of Experience (2007), SUNY Press
Honors, Awards and Affiliations
- Thomas Paine Prize
Awarded for the best paper in political thought in the School of Social and Economic Studies, University of East Anglia, 1993. - Phi Beta Kappa Award for Excellent in Teaching
Awarded for excellence in teaching at BMCC (2016)
