Carlos Fraenkel

is Director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam. His previous positions include James McGill Professor of Philosophy and Religion at McGill University in Montreal and Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at the University of Oxford.

Fraenkel’s work treats philosophy not as a museum of doctrines, but as a set of tools for thinking about how to live. Working across ancient, medieval, and modern traditions, he explores questions of reason and religion, freedom and authority, conflict and coexistence, and the role philosophy can play in public life.

He is the author, among other works, of Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza: Reason, Religion, and Autonomy; Teaching Plato in Palestine: Philosophy in a Divided World; and the forthcoming Radical Ancients: Philosophy as Experiments in Living. His essays have appeared in publications including the London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, New York Times, Boston Review, Dissent, and Liberties.

At McGill, he created The Good Life, a popular undergraduate course on philosophical approaches to the question of how we should live, from Socrates to Sartre (see clip here).

More information can be found at carlosfraenkel.com.

E-Mail: carlos.fraenkel@einsteinforum.de