Short Biography
James Luchte is a philosopher, author, writer and poet.
He is engaged in the philosophy of temporal existence (Early Greek thought, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Bataille, Foucault, Schürmann and others) and the role of language, action and art in the disclosure of truth and in the transformation of concrete existence.
He is on the Board of Advisors of the Nietzsche Circle, a global philosophical community, based in New York. He is also on the Board of Advisors of the Agonist journal, a project of the Nietzsche Circle.
Since 2016, he has published over two dozen political essays in Salon, Counterpunch, Ecologist, TeleSur and others.
His books include
* Mortal Thought: Hölderlin and Philosophy (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016/2018)
* Marx and the Revolution of the Sacred (Free Online or Kindle, Fire & Ice Publishing, 2014)
* Whispers of a Forgotten Nation: The Writings of Dr D. Ceri Evans (Editor, 2014)
* Of the Feral Children: A Mayan Farce (Fire & Ice Publishing, 2012)
* Early Greek Thought: Before the Dawn (Bloomsbury, 2011),
* The Peacock and the Buffalo: The Poetry of Nietzsche (Bloomsbury, 2010),
* Pythagoras and the Doctrine of Transmigration: Wandering Souls (Bloomsbury, 2009),
* Heidegger’s Early Philosophy: The Phenomenology of Ecstatic Temporality (Bloomsbury, 2008)
* Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Before Sunrise (Bloomsbury, 2008)
* Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (Bloomsbury, 2007)
For a closer look at his books, please visit his author’s page at Bloomsbury or Amazon.
He has also written more than two dozen articles on various topics in philosophy, most of which are available on James Luchte: Philosophy.
His poetry has been published by various journals, such as Lampeter Review, The Iranian, Living Poets, and others. It has also been published in translation in China.
Scholarship
James Luchte is a philosopher, author and poet from the United States. He has American, British and European citizenships.
He was a student of Reiner Schürmann and others, such as Anwar Shaikh, Richard Bernstein, Agnes Heller, Wayne Waxman and Johannes Fritsche at the Graduate Faculty of Social and Political Science, New School for Social Research (New School University) in New York from 1988-1997 – although he left New York in 1993, following the death of Reiner Schürmann.
In 1996, Luchte defended his MA thesis, ‘Wandering Souls: The Doctrine of Transmigration in Pythagorean Philosophy,’ an expanded version of which was published as Pythagoras and the Doctrine of Transmigration: Wandering Souls (Bloomsbury, 2009).
In 1997, having emigrated to the United Kingdom, he transferred to the University of Essex, where he benefited from contact with Stephen Mulhull, Beatrice Han-Pile, Simon Critchley, Jay Bernstein, Peter Dews and Fiona Hughes. During this time, he also had substantial contact with the late Charles Sherover, who provided generous feedback and encouragement on his work. Luchte received his Doctorate in Continental Philosophy in 2001 with the thesis Makeshift: Heidegger and the Phenomenology of Original Temporality.
Luchte has taught at the following universities: Ferrum College, Assistant Professor, 2001-2003; University of Wales Lampeter/Trinity Saint David, Senior Lecturer 2004-2014; and Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, School of the Humanities, Visiting Professor, 2014- 2017.
Luchte latest book is Mortal Thought: Hölderlin and Philosophy (Bloomsbury 2016/2018).
To listen to some of his lectures upon a variety of topics in European Philosophy, from German Romanticism, Kant and Hegel to Husserl and Heidegger, please visit James Luchte – Lectures in European Philosophy.
Events and Recent Publications
A Turkish translation of a chapter of Marx and the Revolution of the Sacred, ‘Marx and Sacred Rebellion’ was published in November, 2013 by Istiraki, as ‘Kutsal İsyan ve Marx‘.
On 14/26 January, 2014, Luchte published his essay ‘Wales in the European Union’ in the European Movement.
On 27 February 2014, at the invitation of the Karl Jaspers Society, Luchte’s essay ‘Prometheus Dismembered: Bataille on Van Gogh, or The Window in the Bataille Restaurant’ was presented at the Palmer House Hilton as part of the APA Central Division meeting. This essay will be published in a collection entitled Van Gogh Among the Philosophers (forthcoming).
![]Welsh Shaman' by Eva Lewarne](https://luchte.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/welsh-shaman-eva-lewarne.jpeg?w=214&h=300)
On March 17, Luchte performed a few of his poems for the St Patrick’s Day Disabled Persons charity event in Lampeter, West Wales.
On May 5, 2014, Marx’s birthday, ‘Fatal Repetition: Badiou and the “Age of the Poets”‘ was published as ‘Ölümcül Tekrar: Badiou ve ‘Şairler Çağı’’ in the Turkish print journal İştirakî 2. Sayı Çıktı!.
During the weeks before Election Day, Luchte’s political essay for the European Elections 2014, The British Wasteland: UKIP and the Politics of Disruption, was widely shared and circulated on social media sites.
His political essay Discovering Plaid Cymru, the Party of Wales, begins circulating on social media sites on 23 July 2014.
His essay ‘The Wreckage of Stars: Nietzsche and the Ecstasy of Poetry’, was published on 6 August 2014 by the Unstitute in its project [Dis]Corporate Bodies.
His essay ‘The Tragic Community: Friedrich Nietzsche and Mao Tse Tung’ was published in August in The Agonist, as the Spring Issue, released in August. Publication will also occur shortly in China and India.
His essay Divided We Fall: Plaid Cymru and the Green Agenda began circulating on social media on 5 September 2014.
His essay ‘The Tragic Community: Friedrich Nietzsche and Mao Tse Tung’ was published in Turkish in Istiraki in September 2014.
On 27 October 2014, Luchte published Whispers of a Forgotten Nation – The Writings of Dr D. Ceri Evans, the collected writings of a Welsh revolutionary thinker and activist who took his own life in 2002 at the age of 36.
His essay Discovering Plaid Cymru, the Party of Wales, was published on 29 October 2014 in Daily Wales: New for a Sovereign Nation.
His essay Divided We Fall: Plaid Cymru and the Green Agenda was published on 3 November 2014 in Daily Wales: News for a Sovereign Nation.
His essay The British Wasteland: A History of the Present was published on 25 November 2014 in Daily Wales: News for a Sovereign Nation.
His book Marx and the Revolution of the Sacred is published free online in December 2014 and in February 2015 on Kindle under the imprint Fire & Ice Publishing.
His ‘Open Letter to Tony Hall on Inclusion and Equality in the Leader’s Debates 2015‘ was sent to the General-Director of the BBC, published on 28 December 2014 and shared widely on social media.
On January 5, 2015 his Open Letter to Tony Hall on Inclusion and Equality in the Leader’s Debates 2015 was published by Daily Wales: New for a Sovereign Nation.
On 10 February, his essay Athens Without Slavery: The Battle For Europe – Syriza and the New European Left was published in Daily Wales: News for a Sovereign Nation.
On 23 February, his essay “They Destroy, We Create: The Anti-Austerity UK Alliance”. in Planet Magazine: The Welsh Internationalist (and subsequently republished).
On 25 March 2015, his essay ‘The Ends of the British State’ was published in Planet Magazine: The Welsh Internationalist (and subsequently republished).
On 8 April 2015, his essay ‘The Fourth Reich: American Hegemony and the Question of European Democracy’ was published in Daily Wales: News for a Sovereign Nation.
His essay Earthquake: The UK Leaders Debates was published on 16 April 2015 in Daily Wales: News for a Sovereign Nation.
On 5 May 2015, Luchte published “The Three Graces of Politics: Faith, Hope and Charity” in Daily Wales: News for A Sovereign Nation.
On May 12, The Liberal Democrats: A Post-Mortem was published in Daily Wales: News for a Sovereign Nation.
On May 19, Give the Left a Chance: Reflections on the “Longest Suicide Note in History – Labour Manifesto 1983 in the Daily Wales: News for a Sovereign Nation.
His essay The Politics of the Imperfect: Building A Different World will be published in Turkish in the print journal Istiraki in the autumn..
On June 19th, his essay, ‘Insult to Injury: The Proposed ‘Wales Bill’ was published in Daily Wales: News of a Sovereign Nation.
His essay ‘Of Freedom: Heidegger on Spinoza,’ was published by Epoche: Journal of the History of Philosophy in the Fall of 2015.
In January 2016, his essay ‘Daggers and Spears: Lu Xun and Nietzsche on Cultural Revolution’ was published in The Agonist .
His book, Mortal Thought: Hölderlin and Philosophy will be published on 28 July 2016 by Bloomsbury Publishing.
Explore more than a dozen political essays in Salon, Counterpunch, Ecologist, TeleSur and others since 2016.
His essay, ‘Prometheus Dismembered: Bataille on Van Gogh, or The Window in the Bataille Restaurant’ was published in 2017 in Van Gogh Among the Philosophers, edited by David Nichols, by Lexington Publishing.
For a closer look at his books, please visit his author’s page at Bloomsbury or Amazon.
James Luchte in China
Luchte has had a long relationship with China and was appointed Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics from July 2014-August 2017.
This relationship with SUFE began with the attendance by Dr. Wang Shunning at the International Conference on Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, organised by Luchte, the conference timed to coincide with and celebrate the release of Luchte’s Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Before Sunrise, the first English language collection of essays on Nietzsche’s seminal work (Bloomsbury 2008).
On June 1, 2014, Luchte began a month-long residency at SUFE, under the auspices of a collaborative research project entitled, ‘Classical Traditions and the Contemporary Enlightenment of Nietzsche’s Aesthetics.’ The project focused upon the relationship of Nietzsche’s aesthetics and the Classical traditions of the respective Western and Eastern participants.
Luchte’s central contribution to the project, The Tragic Community: Friedrich Nietzsche and Mao Tse Tung, was an Address presented at a specially arranged Conference in Shanghai on June 10th, 2014. It will be translated and published in China and will be sent to government officials as a new thesis on global governance. It was also be published in The Agonist, in the Spring Issue, released in August 2014 and in Turkish in Istiraki in September 2014. The essay seeks to clarify the meaning of a ‘Democratic Community’ through an original and novel dialogue between Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy and Mao Tse Tung’s August, 1937 essay, ‘On Contradiction’.
During his Residency, Luchte also delivered a four week lecture series for students and the public, entitled ‘A History of Western Aesthetics,’ from Homer to Derrida. The lectures were held in the evening, each session culminating in ‘free discussions’ of the students and faculty of SUFE.
At the close of his Residency, Luchte was named Visiting Professor for three years, for the period from 1 July 2014 to 30 June 2017, during which he will undertake yearly Residencies at SUFE.
Luchte was Guest Editor of the Fall 2015/Spring 2016 edition of The Agonist on ‘Nietzsche and Chinese Thought’. His work for this piece is entitled ‘Daggers and Spears: Lu Xun and Nietzsche on Cultural Revolution.’
Latest Book
James Luchte’s latest book is Mortal Thought: Hölderlin and Philosophy, published by Bloomsbury Publishing in 2016.
Mortal Thought explores the radical philosophical innovations of the poet-philosopher Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) and their seminal influence upon philosophy from the 19th century to the present day. The study casts into relief Hölderlin as a tragic philosopher in the age of romanticism, responsible, according to Foucault, for the radical ‘return of time’ to Western thought. Beginning with the point of departure of Hölderlin in Kant and the post-Kantian debates, Luchte explores the emergence of Hölderlin as poet-philosopher and revolutionary, his influence upon the four dominant strands of Continental philosophy – Nietzsche, Heidegger, Critical Theory and post-structuralism – and his relevance for our own era.
Luchte’s ongoing research interests include:
Heidegger’s Turn (Kehre) and its role in the re-inauguration of Heidegger’s thought
Kant and German Idealism: Kant, Fichte, Hölderlin, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer
European Romanticism, Marx, Nietzsche, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Celine
Aesthetics; Art, Philosophy, Music and Literature
Frankfurt School: Benjamin, Adorno, Habermas, Marcuse
Post-structuralism: Bataille, Lacan, Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, Iriguray, Kristeva
American Transcendentalism and Romanticism (Emerson, Thoreau, Poe)
Wittgenstein and the Continental tradition
Contemporary Continental Political Philosophy
Global Politics, Multilateralism, and Polycentrism
The Sinofication of Marxism, Maoism, and Chinese Thought; Hegel after Mao.
Philosophy and Film
Contact
To contact James Luchte, to make media inquiries and interview requests, please message him at one of the following sites:
James Luchte on LinkedIn
James Luchte: Philosophy 
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