John Ackroyd

Biography

I teach ethical and political philosophy and more broadly intellectual history in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at the University of Bradford. I am module leader for the Department's third-year Dissertation module, and until recently I was programme leader for the Foundation Year. 

The title of my PhD is 'The Objective Pluralism of Isaiah Berlin: A Historical Approach to Ethical and Political Philosophy'. I am interested in the question of the historical relativity or otherwise of ethical and political norms in the Western tradition of thought, and in historiography and the philosophy of history, particularly the question whether and how we can understand societies across temporal and cultural divides. I also have some expertise in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, especially his concept and use of analogy in philosophical argument. Further interests are the philosophy of Kant's contemporary and critic, J.G. Fichte, in particular his notion of the self not as actor but action, and the work of the Russian thinker Mikhail Bakhtin, notably his concept of 'outsideness', which challenges received ideas in the West about historical and cultural understanding.