I am a Collegiate Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago, and a Harper-Schmidt Fellow in the University of Chicago Society of Fellows. I received my Ph.D. in Philosophy from Boston College in 2023, and a B.A. in Religion from Columbia University in 2014.

I publish on topics in ethics, moral psychology, and 20th-century European philosophy (especially phenomenology and hermeneutics). Most of my research explores various intersections of the themes of emotion, social interpretation, and responsibility. I also maintain an active research program on the life and writing of Hannah Arendt.

Under “Research,” you can find short descriptions and links to my published writing in academic journals and books. Here are some of my current projects under development (updated Aug. 5):

• My first book project, Feeling Beside Oneself, on moral emotions, political dialogue, and open-mindedness.

• An article on the implicit hermeneutic theory at work in Edmund Husserl’s self-professed “quasi-Cartesianism” in the Paris Lectures.

• An article on a variant of Moore’s problem that occurs when we try to practice open-mindedness from within the felt experience of moral indignation

• A co-authored article assessing the compatibility between emerging climate intervention technologies and participatory democratic infrastructures at multiple scales.

• An encyclopedia entry on the theme of “injustice” across the history of philosophical hermeneutics.

• An article on community, localism, and humanism as recurring themes in Arendt and Jaspers’ correspondences.

My University of Chicago faculty page can be found here, and you can contact me directly at: magnus.ferguson@uchicago.edu.