| Region: | Western philosophy |
| Era: | 21st-century philosophy |
| David Kleinberg-Levin | |
| Birth Date: | 6 April 1939 |
| Institutions: | Northwestern University |
| Main Interests: | hermeneutical phenomenology, critical social theory, philosophical essays on the arts |
| Education: | Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts (Honours, 1958) Harvard University (BA, Honours, 1961) Columbia University (Ph.D., 1967) |
David Kleinberg-Levin (born 6 April 1939) is an American philosopher and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University. He is known for his works on 19th and 20th century continental European philosophy. His primary focus, influenced in part by Friedrich Schiller, is the formation of an approach to morality and ethical life with an emphasis on perception and sensibility. In 2005, he retired as Professor Emeritus from Northwestern University.[1] [2] [3] [4]
Kleinberg-Levin’s lifetime project in philosophy, which he has called “The Body of Ontological Understanding,” draws on a hermeneutical phenomenology (especially the work of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty) in order to illuminate, in the light of critical social theory (especially the thought of Benjamin, Adorno, Habermas), the stages in a process of self-development embodying in the maturity of seeing, hearing, movement and gesturing, a sensibility and understanding (phronesis) conducive to participating in the flourishing of ethical life and contributing to its empathic openness to the Other. Recently, he has also made caring for the natural environment a theme for his research and thought, arguing that, in the acquisition of language, the infant is solicited and induced by the sounds of nature and the social environment to replicate these sounds in forming speech. And this indebtedness or beholdenness to nature in the learning of language, he argues, constitutes a reciprocating moral responsibility for the natural environment, as well as a strong reciprocal moral responsibility to serve the community and its culture.[5]