Divinity School Teaching Fellow in the College

Jesse Berger holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Religions from UChicago Divinity School and a M.Sc. in Philosophy of Science from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He specializes in South Asian Sanskrit philosophy, with a particular interest in the dialogical evolution of Buddhism and Śaivism in medieval Kashmir. His work is characterized by a cross-cultural methodology that often brings 20th Century Anglo-American philosophers into conversation with ancient Indian counterparts in a constructive attempt to articulate the common epistemological and metaphysical presuppositions of culturally disparate schools of philosophy. His dissertation—entitled Thinking In-Between: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of the Problem of Relations in South Asian Philosophy—speaks to this approach, drawing upon the pragmatic hermeneutics of C.S. Peirce and William James to taxonomically categorize and rationally reconstruct the relational philosophies of Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika, Buddhism, and Kashmir Śaivism. He has published articles in journals like Philosophy East and West, The Journal of Indian Philosophy, and Religions. Other areas of interest include process philosophy; religion and science; philosophy of physics; embodied cognitive science; Buddhist modernism; the secularization of religious practices, and the related ‘spiritual but not religious’ phenomenon. In his spare time, he can be found playing jazz guitar in the manouche style of Django Reinhardt, or producing synth-wave electronic music with his Roland Juno-106.