Dhananjay Jagannathan
I am an ethicist by training and profession. My academic work focuses on the history of Western philosophy (especially on Aristotle and Aquinas), contemporary moral and political philosophy, and issues at the intersection of philosophy and literature (especially tragedy). In recent years, I have published a substantial body of public-facing theological or theologically inflected writing, mainly in Christian magazines, about religion, politics, literature, and music, including several pieces each for Plough Quarterly, Earth & Altar, and Breaking Ground. One of my main intellectual projects, especially in joint work with my wife Tara Isabella Burton, a novelist and theologian, is the articulation of the role of beauty in our ethical lives and the place of moral judgment in our engagement with art. I hope to bring both the intellectual standards of philosophical ethics and a conviction in the relevance of lived and embodied experience to our ethical lives to the work of the GBEC.