Faculty of Philosophy


Angela Breitenbach


Portrait of Angela Breitenbach

Angela Breitenbach is a University Lecturer and a Fellow in Philosophy at King’s College, Cambridge. Her research focuses on the history of modern philosophy, in particular the philosophy of Kant, as well as questions in philosophy of science, philosophy of biology, and aesthetics.

Angela studied for a BA in Philosophy and a MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. She completed her doctorate at the Humboldt University of Berlin with a thesis on Kant’s philosophy of nature for which she was awarded a Humboldt Prize. In 2006 she returned to the UK as a Junior Research Fellow at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and subsequently spent three years as a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of East Anglia. She joined the Cambridge Philosophy Faculty in 2012.

Angela has been awarded a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship, which she will hold from May 2013 to April 2015, to work on ‘Beauty in science: A Kantian approach to aesthetics in the study of nature’. The project will focus on two key questions: How should we understand judgments about the beauty of scientific theories? And what bearing do such judgments have on the truth of theories? Angela will investigate whether we can give answers to these questions that provide an alternative to both traditional metaphysical accounts that link truth and beauty and prevailing contemporary conceptions that construe this link as purely contingent. Building on a Kantian conception of regulative principles in science, she will examine whether we may conceive of aesthetics as intrinsically tied to the aims of science by appreciating the inevitable conditions of the human perspective.

Angela is a Network Partner of the Leverhulme Trust International Network on ‘Kant and the laws of nature: Lessons from the physical and biological sciences of the 18th Century’. From November 2012 to October 2015 the network will bring together eight institutions in the UK, USA and Germany. For details see: http://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/news/news_item.cfm/newsid/34/newsid/149


Monograph


Journal Articles

  • ‘Beauty in Proofs: Kant on Aesthetics in Mathematics’, European Journal of Philosophy (forthcoming)
  • ‘Teleology in Biology: A Kantian Approach’, Kant Yearbook, 1 (2009), 31-56
  • ‘Umweltethik nach Kant: Ein analogisches Verständnis vom Wert der Natur’, Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 57 (2009), 377-395 (‘Kantian Environmental Ethics: An Analogical Conception of the Value of Nature’)
  • ‘Two Views on Nature: A Solution to Kant’s Antinomy of Mechanism and Teleology’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 16 (2008), 351-369
  • ‘Nonsense and Mysticism in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus’, Warwick Journal of Philosophy, 19 (2008), 55-77
  • ‘Mechanical Explanation of Nature and its Limits in Kant’s Critique of Judgment’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Science, 37 (2006), 694-711
  • ‘Kant Goes Fishing: Kant and the Right to Property in Environmental Resources’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Science, 36 (2005), 488-512
  • ‘Langton on Things in Themselves: A Critique of Kantian Humility’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 35 (2004), 137-148

Book Chapters

  • ‘Biological Purposiveness and Analogical Reflection', in I. Goy and E. Watkins (eds.), Kant’s Theory of Biology, Berlin/ New York: Walter de Gruyter (forthcoming)
  • ‘Kant on Biology and the Experience of Life’, in C. de la Rocca (ed.), Proceedings of the XIth International Kant Congress, Berlin/ New York, Walter de Gruyter (forthcoming)
  • ‘Kant on Causal Knowledge: Causality, Mechanism and Reflective Judgment’, in K. Allen and T. Stoneham (eds.), Causation and Modern Philosophy, London: Routledge, 2011, 201-219
  • ‘Die Frage nach dem Lebendigen in Zeiten biowissenschaftlichen Fortschritts’, in A. Trautsch and S. Springmann (eds.), Was ist Leben? Festgabe für Volker Gerhardt, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2009, 29-34 (‘The Question of Life in Times of Bio-scientific Progress’)
  • ‘Vernunft in der Natur: Umweltphilosophie bei Kant’, in V. Rohden, R. R. Terra, G. A. de Almeida and M. Ruffing (eds.), Right and Peace in the Philosophy of Kant, Proceedings of the Xth International Kant Congress, Berlin/ New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2008, Vol. 3, 485-496 (‘Reason in Nature: Environmental Philosophy after Kant’)
  • ‘Kreativität in der Natur: Eine Kantische Betrachtung der Teleologie in der Biologie’, in G. Abel (ed.), Kreativität, XX. Deutscher Kongress für Philosophie, Berlin: Universitätsverlag TU Berlin, 2008, Vol. 2, 323-334 (‘Creativity in Nature: A Kantian Consideration of Teleology in Biology’)

Other Pieces

  • ‘Fakultät’; ‘Organon’; ‘Organon der reinen Vernunft’; ‘Skandal der Philosophie’; in G. Mohr, J. Stolzenberg and M. Willaschek (eds.), Kant-Lexikon, Berlin/ New York: Walter de Gruyter (forthcoming)
  • Book review of L. Illetterati and F. Michelini (eds.), Teleology: Purposiveness Between Nature and Mind, Ontos: Frankfurt, 2008, Studi Kantiani, 23 (2010), 159-163
  • ‘Onora O’Neill’, in J. Nida-Rümelin and E. Özmen (eds.), Philosophie der Gegenwart, Stuttgart: Kröner, 2007, 479-483

Teaching 2012-2013


Michaelmas 2012

  • Part II, Paper 4: Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
  • Part II, Paper 11: Aesthetic Experienc

Lent 2013

  • Part IA, Paper 4: Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
  • Part IB, Paper 5: Berkeley and Hume
  • Part II, Paper 9: Wittgenstein’s On Certainty

Contact Details

Email Address: ab335@cam.ac.uk
Postal address: King’s College, Cambridge CB2 1ST
Website (with online papers): http://cambridge.academia.edu/AngelaBreitenbach





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