Welcome to the website of Carleton B. Christensen.
I am a philosopher who until September, 2019, was in the School of Philosophy at the Australian National University. I have now moved to the Department of Philosophy in the School of Humanities and Languages at the University of New South Wales.
I have written a number of papers on different topics, not all of them strictly or mainstream philosophical. But I would like to make them widely accessible, hence have posted them to this site.
I have also provided some of the course materials I have used for teaching in different courses at different universities.
I specialise in German philosophy, particularly Husserl and Heidegger, as well as the philosophy of technology & sustainability. But I also have a background in analytical philosophy, Descartes, Kant, Marx and Critical Theory.
See the about page for more on me.
Last aside
The ACT Planning Review and Reform Project 2021
The ACT government is conducting a Planning Review and Reform project whose ultimate goal is to move ACT planning instruments away from an allegedly “rules-based” system to an “outcomes-focussed” one. In an article I have recently written for the Canberra Planning Action Group, I examine whether the undoubted problems of the current instruments to which Chief Planner Ben Ponton points are really due to whatever character current planning instruments have as “rules-based.” In addition, it examines the concept of outcomes-focussed or, as it is sometimes called, performance-based planning. It also looks at how it has performed in one jurisdiction, Queensland, in which it has been introduced. Both analysis of the concept and examination of the history of outcomes-focussed planning show that the problems of Canberra’s planning instruments has nothing to do with its being “rules-based” as opposed to “outcomes-focussed.” In fact, a partial shift towards the latter had already been introduced in 2007! Moreover, the experience of Queensland shows that if anything the shift to outcomes-focussed planning has increased the kinds of difficulty which Ponton adduces as justifying a shift—more precisely, consummation of a shift already partially undertaken—towards outcomes-focussed planning. And the nett result of the proposed reforms will be to make current planning instruments even more developer-friendly than they are already.
An abstract for the paper can be found in the CPAG Newsletter for December, 2021.
The paper itself can be found at: The Significance of the Current ACT Government Planning Review
Another paper of mine, one co-authored with Geoffrey Pryor, can also be found at the CPAG website: Government-initiated Consultation re Planning in the ACT
Recent Papers
Intentionality inherently de se and the Problem of Self-Consciousness
In this paper I present what Kristina Musholt, in her book Thinking of Oneself—From Non conceptual Content to the Concept of the Self (MIT Press, 2015), calls the problem of self-consciousness. This is an old problem, reaching back from Shoemaker and analytic philosophy on the one side, Henrich and the Heidelberg School on the other, through Sartre and phenomenology to Fichte. My goal is to…
Phrónesis, Gewissen und Schuld in Sein und Zeit
Dieses Paper bildet den Text eines Vortrags, den ich am 20.sten Juni, 2019, im Institut für Philosophie an der Universität Leipzig, und am 27.sten Juni, 2019 im Institut für Philosophie an der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität, Münster, gehalten habe.
Muss die Gegebenheit des Subjekts eine Gegebenheit als Subjekt sein?
Dieses Paper bildet den Text eines Vortrags, den ich am 22.sten Juni, 2018, auf dem Workshop „Philosophischer Askriptivismus“ (21..sten bis 22..sten, 2018) an der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität, Münster, gehalten habe.