On January 10, 2018, Chelsea C. Harry, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Philosophy at Southern Connecticut State University presented “Animal Cognition: Capacity for the Good Life and How Humans Can Help Non-Humans Flourish.”
Chelsea Harry is a philosopher of nature, and her work is rooted in the history of ideas. Her historical areas of specialty include ancient Greek, especially Aristotelian naturalism, and late 18th-19th Century German thought.
In her research, Harry strives to answer questions of how our perspective on nature and life affect both the way we humans understand ourselves and, concomitantly, how we treat non-humans as a result of this understanding. She is particularly interested in historical ways of viewing non-human others, how these views may inform our human way of acting toward non-humans today, and to what extent contemporary animal science supports these views. Her current project concerns what she calls, non-human flourishing, or the idea that humans are not the only living creatures who can experience varying degrees of living. Her research suggests that in fact non-humans have the capacity not just to live, but to live well.
Harry is the author of the book, Chronos in Aristotle’s Physics: On the Nature of Time (Springer, 2015), which will be featured in an Author-Meets-Critics panel at the 2018 meeting of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Society. In addition, she has published articles in scholarly journals such as, Apeiron: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science, Idealistic Studies, Comparative and Continental Philosophy, Journal of Speculative Philosophy, The Journal for Islamic Philosophy, Parmenideum Journal, Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences as well as book chapters. In September 2012 and February 2015, she appeared on NBC Connecticut to discuss her research. In addition to work on her current manuscript, provisionally titled, Function, Flourishing, and Fair Treatment: An Aristotelian argument for non-human animal well-being and a proposal for its practical application, she is completing a translation of F.W.J. Schelling’s mid-19th c. diaries, letters, and philosophical notes (under contract with SUNY Press) and co-editing a collected volume on the reception of Presocratic natural philosophy in later classical philosophy (under contract with Brill).
Harry received her B.A. from The George Washington University (2003), her M.A. from the University of Hawaii (2005), and her Ph.D. from Duquesne University (2013) where she was a McAnulty doctoral fellow. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the recipient of various scholarships and grants. She has been a visiting researcher at The University of Cologne Philosophy Department, the Bavarian Academy of Science, and the International Centre for Aristotle Studies, where she was a Visiting Fellow in 2014. She has delivered keynote and invited lectures in London, Reykjavik, Kassel, and Thessaloniki, among others. In December 2016, she was one of six young women scholars selected to participate in the 3rd Ancient Philosophy Workshop held at the Humboldt University Berlin. In 2017, she was the Norbert and Carol Schedler Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Central Arkansas. Harry is a member of the American Philosophical Association, the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy, the North American Schelling Society, the Ancient Philosophy Society, among others.
Dr. Harry has an interest in community engagement. She has taught philosophy to inner city high school students and to incarcerated individuals and regularly incorporates service-learning into the philosophy curricula she teaches at SCSU.
Read the minutes from the meeting.
Dinner followed for CAAS members and guests. (Dinner fee is $35/person)