Anthony Edward Garruzzo

6th Year Graduate Student | Ph.D. program in Philosophy

My primary research interests are in social theory and political philosophy. In my work, I consider the question of how best to account for the order and organization that characterizes a society. In particular, I ask to what extent and in what ways social organization should be analyzed in terms of cultural conditions.

My dissertation addresses this question through an analytical reconstruction of two concepts (‘ideology’ and ‘rationality’) that are central to much contemporary work in social and political philosophy. I argue through critical engagement with the work of Michel Foucault and Jürgen Habermas that in order to account for the cultural basis of social order, it is necessary to conceptualize ‘ideology’ and ‘rationality’ in terms of the socially articulated and institutionally embedded techniques employed by individual and corporate social actors. I propose that ideology and rationality should not be conceived in abstraction from their diverse concrete historical manifestations—that, in fact, the study of what I call ‘concrete rationalities’ is essential to the proper analysis of social order.

I also have interests in feminist theory, existentialism, and the philosophy of art.