Pierre-Julien Harter

Assistant Professor
The Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Professor of Philosophy in Buddhist Studies

Photo: Pierre-Julien Harter

Speakers Coordinator

Email: pjharter@unm.edu
Office: Humanities 555
Hours: Mondays 2pm to 4pm

  • Licence (Université Paris 1-Panthéon-Sorbonne, 2002)
  • Alumnus of the École Normale Supérieure (Paris)
  • Ph.D. (University of Chicago, 2015)

Research Interests:

My philosophical education is double. On the one hand, I followed a classical training in ancient, modern, and continental philosophy when I was in France, with an emphasis on ancient Greek and Latin philosophy (I worked on Plotinus in particular). On the other hand, my areas of specialization concern the Buddhist Philosophy of India and Tibet, as well as Indian Philosophy more broadly. I am committed to fostering a dialogue between these philosophical traditions, both in my research and my teaching, as a way to nurture a practice of philosophy that, in my opinion, will prove fruitful for its future.

My research has focused on the way Buddhist philosophers reflected upon their own philosophical activity as framed by the notion of the “path” or “way,” which has required me to keep a broad interest in epistemology, ethics, and metaphysics.

I am a firm believer in the virtues of rigorous philological and historical approaches in philosophy, and thus of the necessity to attend to a patient reading of texts (an aspect I emphasize in my classes).  I also consider the creative work in philosophy of the outmost importance, so that the texts we read do not remain merely objects of our research, but enable us to become subjects of our own philosophical reflections.

Recent Publications:

For a list of publications, please click here

Other Information:

Classes Taught:

Greek Thought (2225) 

Introduction to Indian Philosophy (334) 

Introduction to Buddhist Philosophy (333) 

Classical Social and Political Philosophy (371) 

Comparative Metaphysics (reading of Indian, Greek, and European texts such as Praśastapāda, Aristotle, Nāgārjuna, Plotinus, Vasubandhu, Descartes, Nietzsche, Daya Krishna) 

Plato’s Republic (441) 

Plato, Nāgārjuna and Wittgenstein: Towards the Possibility of Metaphysics? (454/554) Co-Taught with Prof. Paul Livingston

Seminar on metaphysics: the problem of universals in Indian and Medieval Latin Philosophies (454/554) 

Plato and Plotinus: Metaphysics Beyond Being (457/557) 

Spinoza and Vasubandhu: A Study in Causal Soteriologies (457/557) 

Spinoza’s Ethics (457/557)