Christoph Cox, professor of philosophy, received his B.A. in modern culture and media from Brown University and a Ph.D. in the history of consciousness from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Professor Cox teaches and writes on contemporary European philosophy, cultural theory, and aesthetics.
He is the author of Sonic Flux: Sound, Art, and Metaphysics (University of Chicago Press, 2018) and Nietzsche: Naturalism and Interpretation (University of California Press, 1999), and co-editor of Realism Materialism Art (Sternberg, 2015) and Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music (Continuum, 2004/2017). The recipient of an Arts Writers Grant from Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation, Cox is editor-at-large at Cabinet magazine. His writing has appeared in October, Artforum, Journal of the History of Philosophy, The Wire, Journal of Visual Culture, Organised Sound, The Review of Metaphysics, and elsewhere.
He has curated exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, The Kitchen, CONTEXT Art Miami, New Langton Arts, G Fine Art Gallery, and other venues and has written essays exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, Mass MoCA, the South London Gallery, Berlin's Akademie der Künste, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Oslo Kunstforening, and other venues.
Recent and Upcoming Courses
- Philosophy, Relativism, and Truth
Is there such a thing as "objective" or "absolute" truth? Or is everything "relative" - to a particular individual, culture, language, or conceptual framework? What is truth, anyway? In this course, we will examine the nature of truth, knowledge, and value, and consider a range of challenges to the idea of "objective" or "absolute" truth. We will begin by examining solipsism, skepticism, and subjective relativism, and then spend the rest of the semester discussing various forms of relativism and realism (epistemological, moral, cultural, aesthetic, etc.). Reading texts by ancient, modern, and contemporary philosophers, we will try to sort out strong from weak arguments for various versions of realism and relativism.
- Kant, Hegel, Marx
Immanuel Kant revolutionized philosophy by arguing that human knowledge does not grasp the world as it really is, but only the world as it corresponds to the human mind. Kant's great successor, G.W.F. Hegel, pushed this idea further, attempting to show that absolute reality is essentially ideal, mental, or spiritual. Though profoundly influenced by Hegel, Karl Marx emphatically rejected Hegel's idealism, arguing that the history of the world is not the history of ideas but of class struggle. In this course, we will closely read texts by these three thinkers and examine their conceptions of knowledge, reality, history, and freedom.
- Introduction to Metaphysics
What is ultimately or fundamentally real? What is the nature of being? Is reality ultimately physical or nonphysical? Is it one or many, visible or invisible, discrete or diffuse, eternal or temporal? Philosophers have offered the wildest and most varied answers to these questions. Today, metaphysical debates continue to rage within philosophy, cultural theory, and social theory. In this course, we will survey a range of metaphysical theories - from the ancient to the contemporary, and from Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America. The texts will be difficult but deeply rewarding.
- Audio Culture: Theories and Practices in Music Now
This course will explore a range of vanguard musical practices and various approaches to thinking theoretically and critically about them. We will traverse musical areas such as minimalism, indeterminacy, musique concrete, free improvisation, turntablism, and electronica, and examine these via historical and philosophical texts by theorists, composers and producers. Investigating different modes of listening to and talking about contemporary music, we will ask such questions as: What is the nature of music in relationship to silence and noise? What are the effects of recording and sampling on contemporary musical life? Can music have a political or critical function? Are the distinctions between "classical" and "popular," "high art" and "mass art" still appropriate in the contemporary setting?
- Philosophy as a Way of Life
Philosophy today is generally conceived and practiced as a purely theoretical discipline dedicated to answering conceptual questions and solving intellectual problems. Yet philosophy began as a practical discipline dedicated to helping human beings live their lives in the fullest and best way possible. In this course, we will read and discuss the work of various philosophers-ancient, modern, and postmodern-for whom philosophy is a practical tool for living. Readings from Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Shankara, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Sartre, the Situationists, Singer, Nussbaum, and West.
- Thinking the Absolute: Metaphysics and the New Realism
Can we grasp the way the world really is, or are our concepts and ideas always mediated by conceptual schemes, linguistic categories, and social positioning? While the latter view has dominated philosophy and cultural theory for the past half century, the former view has become increasingly prominent. This course will examine the work of a variety of philosophers who argue that our thought can grasp "the absolute": the neo-materialism of Manuel DeLanda, Jane Bennett, Catherine Malabou, and Karen Barad; the neo-rationalism of Alain Badiou, Quentin Meillassoux, and Ray Brassier; and the object-oriented ontology of Graham Harman and Timothy Morton. The course will also consider important influences on new realist thought such as Wilfrid Sellars and Paul and Patricia Churchland.
- The Posthuman Condition
Are we becoming "posthuman"? Can we be certain that the versions of humanity that have existed until now will continue to exist in the future, given our ability to control our own evolution and to create intelligent machines? Can we still uphold a boundary between biological organism and cybernetic mechanism? How have posthuman conceptions provided inspiration for black liberation, feminist politics, and gender hacking? We will begin by discussing philosophical and biological conceptions of the human and the boundaries between humans, animals, machines, and other entities. We will go on to explore the ontological and ethical issues presented by versions of the posthuman in theory, film, music, art, and literature. Theoretical readings by Haraway, Preciado, Braidotti, Eshun, Parisi, Weheliye, Darwin, Nietzsche, DeLanda, Thacker, Hayles, and others.
