Sonia Sikka
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy
Chair
Member of the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies and thereby authorized to supervise theses.
Office: ARTS 243
Telephone: 613-562-5800, ext. 5829
E-mail: ssikka@uOttawa.ca
University degrees
PhD in Philosophy, York University, England
BA Honours in English, Victoria University
Fields of interest
- Philosophy of Culture
- Philosophy of Religion
- Modern European Philosophy
Ongoing research
My recent research addresses questions about cultural identity, with an emphasis on the intersection between religion and culture. Over the last decade, I have been working on the thought of Johann Gottfried Herder, examining his ideas about humanity and cultural difference in light of contemporary debates regarding race, identity, relativism and multiculturalism. Recently, I have begun to engage more broadly with the topic of identity formation, drawing on cross-cultural comparisons between Canada, the U.S. and India. At the same time, I retain my interest in authors within the continental tradition, particularly Heidegger and Nietzsche.
Seminars
2008 – History and Human Destiny
2006 – Heidegger on Knowledge and Reality
2005 – Heidegger’s Critique of Modernity
2004 – Nietzsche on Truth
2003 – Heidegger’s Being and Time
2003 – Nietzsche as Existentialist
Selected publications
Articles
"The Perils of Indian Secularism," forthcoming, Constellations.
“Untouchable Cultures: Memory, Power and the Construction of Dalit Selfhood,”Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 19:1, 43-60.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1070289X.2012.672837
"In What Sense Are Dalits Black?" In The Philosophy of Race, Vol IV: Intersections and Positions, ed. Paul C. Taylor (New York: Routledge, 2012), 253-61.
"Liberalism, Multiculturalism and the Case for Public Religion," Politics and Religion (Cambridge University Press), 3 (2010), 580-609.
"Herder's Critique of Pure Reason," Review of Metaphysics, 61 (2007), 31-50.
"On the Value of Happiness: Herder contra Kant," Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 37/4 (December 2007), 515-46.
“Kantian Ethics in Being and Time,” with response by Tom Rockmore, and reply by author, Journal of Philosophical Research, 31 (2006), 309-334.
“Herder and the Concept of Race,” Herder Yearbook, 8 (2006), 133-58.
“Enlightened Relativism: The Case of Herder,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, 31 (2005), 309-41.
“On the Manifest Destiny of Western Values,” in Towards Greater Human Solidarity: Options for a Plural World, ed. Anindita N. Balslev (Kolkata: Dasgupta & co., 2005), 86-104.
“‘Learning to be Indian’: Historical Narratives and the ‘Choice’ of a Cultural Identity,” Dialogue, 53 (2004), 339-54.
“Herder on the Relation between Language and World,” History of Philosophy Quarterly, 21 (2004), 183-200.
“Heidegger and Race,” in Race and Racism in Continental Philosophy, ed. Robert Bernasconi (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 74-97.
“The Delightful Other: Portraits of the Feminine in Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Levinas,” in Feminist Interpretations of Emmanuel Levinas, ed. Tina Chanter (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), 96-118.
“Heidegger and Jaspers: Being, Language, Technicity,” International Studies in Philosophy, 33:2 (2001), 105-30.
“Nietzsche's Contribution to a Phenomenology of Intoxication,” Journal for Phenomenological Psychology, 31 (2000), 19-43.
“How not to read the other: ‘All the rest can be translated’” (on Emmanuel Levinas), Philosophy Today, 43 (1999), 195-206.
“On the Truth of Beauty: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Keats,” Heythrop Journal, 39 (1998), 243-63.
“Questioning the Sacred: Heidegger and Levinas on the Locus of Divinity,” Modern Theology, 14 (1998), 299-323.
“Heidegger's Concept of Volk,” Philosophical Forum, 26 (1994), 101-26.
“Heidegger's Appropriation of Schelling,” Southern Journal of Philosophy, 32 (1994), 421-48.
"The Philosophical Bases of Heidegger's Politics,” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 25 (1994), 241-62.
Books
Herder on Humanity and Cultural Difference: Enlightened Relativism. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Forms of Transcendence: Heidegger and Medieval Mystical Theology. Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1997.