dr. Sjoerd van Tuinen

Dr. Sjoerd van Tuinen is associate professor of philosophy at Erasmus School of Philosophy

Driven by affinities between the arts and humanities, and with expertise across the spectrum of continental philosophy, my research and teaching are rooted in the theoretical traditions of pragmatism, philosophical anthropology, critical theory, and (post-)structuralism. I combine contemporary questions concerning the (bio)politics of debt, power struggles over the imagination, the coherence of habits and habitats, changing technology and media cultures, the destitution of subjectivity, the return of fascism, and the politics of affect with problems in metaphysics, aesthetics, social and political theory, and the history of Western philosophy. Some of my inspirations: Leibniz, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Bergson, Whitehead, Heidegger, Adorno, Deleuze, Stengers, and Agamben.

After having studied sociology and philosophy in Rotterdam, Rome and Leipzig, I obtained my PhD at Ghent University (2009) for a dissertation on Deleuze and neo-monadological accounts of subjectivity. In 2008-9 I worked as a lecturer at Maastricht University. I have been visiting lecturer at Stellenbosch University (2005), visiting professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (2013), research fellow at Humboldt University (2014) and Fordham University (2016), Fung Global Fellow at Princeton University (2017-18), and collaborator at NOVA University Lisbon (2022-). I have received several research grants, among them the NWO-Veni scholarship, and edited over two dozen films, volumes and special issues, including a series of interdisciplinary theory books with V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media. I’m a founding member of the Erasmus Institute for Public Knowledge and editor for various journals including De Uil van Minerva. Much of my work is available on academia.edu. ORCID iD

Selected audio and video

‘De anarchistische metafysica van Gabriel Tarde’, De nieuwe wereld (2023), link ‘Menno ter Braak: kikker in het moeras’, Felix en Sofie (2023), link ‘Ressentiment: a liberal concept?’, Study Groups in Psychoanalysis and Politics (2022), link ‘The philosophy of care’, Rhizostance (2021), link The Toxic Reigns of Resentment, Bullfrog Films (2019), link Book presentation Leven in het antropoceen, Studio Erasmus (2019), link ‘Die beste aller möglichen Welten?’ Zum 70. Geburtstag Peter Sloterdijks, ZKM Karlsruhe (2017), link ‘Good sense and common sense’, response to I. Stengers, Kaaitheater (2017), link Lectures on aesthetics, Frontaalfilm (2017), link Class on the anthropocene, EUR (2016), link

Key publications

Book in progress: Less Subject More Substance. Anarchism and Psychopolitics

Forthcoming book: Deleuze’s Mannerist Aesthetics (Edinburgh UP, 2027).

Book: The Dialectic of Ressentiment: Pedagogy of a Concept (Routledge, 2023). Open access

Book: The Philosophy of Mannerism: From Aesthetics to Modal Metaphysics (Bloomsbury, 2022).

Papers on continental modal metaphysics: 'Difference and Speculation: Heidegger, Meillassoux and Deleuze on Sufficient Reason', in: A. Beaulieu & E. Kazarian & J. Sushytska (eds.), Deleuze and Metaphysics (Lexington Books, 2014), 63-90. pdf ‘Continental Modal Metaphysics: From Leibniz to Agamben’, Itinerari. Annuario di Ricerche Filosofiche (2026). ‘Logical Modalities and Modes of Existence’, Cenari. Rivista semestrale di filosofia contemporanea 24.1 (2026). ‘Simondon’s Modal Metaphysics’, in: R. Mendoza-Canales, Individuating Simondon: Between Life and Technology (Springer 2026).

Papers on anarchism and autonomist marxism: 'Biomacht en biopolitiek: de inbedding van Foucault in het autonoom marxisme', in: Krisis. Tijdschrift voor actuele filosofie 2009.3, 68-85. With A. Griffioen. pdf 'Intersubjectivity and Transindividuality: Leibniz, Husserl, Deleuze, and the Composition of Worlds (Animal Monadology)', Lo Sguardo. Rivista di filosofia, 32 (2021), doi ‘The Use of Souls: Souriau and Political Spirituality’, Aisthesis. Pratiche, linguaggi e saperi dell’estetico 15.2 (2022), 103-13. doi; ‘Political Mannerism’ in: M. Marder and G. Tusa (eds.), Glossary of the Present (MIT Press, 2024). pdf

Papers on critique and care: 'Deleuze: Speculative and Practical Philosophy', in: A. Avanessian & S. Malik (eds.), Genealogies of Speculation. Materialism and Subjectivity since Structuralism. Bloomsbury (2015), 93-114. pdf 'Elasticity and Plasticity: Immunology and the Crisis of Repetition', in: A. Radman & H. Sohn (eds). Critical and Clinical Cartographies. Edinburgh University Press (2017), 243-68. pdf  'Common Sense: From Critique to Care' in: J. Brouwer & S. van Tuinen (eds.) To Mind is to Care, V2 Publishers (2019), 124-57. pdf  'Philosophy in the Light of AI: Hegel or Leibniz', in Angelaki. Journal for the Theoretical Humanities 25.4 (2020), 97-109, doi 

Book: Peter Sloterdijk – Ein Profil (Fink/UTB, 1st and 2nd editions, 2006) pdf and 2004 Dutch version. English follow-ups: 'Critique Beyond Resentment. An Introduction to Peter Sloterdijk’s Jovial Modernity', Cultural Politics 3.3 (2007), 275-306 doi 'Air Conditioning Spaceship Earth: Peter Sloterdijk’s Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm', Society and Space 27.1 (2009), 105-18. doi ‘A Thymotic Left? Peter Sloterdijk and the Psychopolitics of Ressentiment’ Symploke 18.1/2 (2011), 217-34. doi

Selected edited volumes

Miscellaneous: The Politics of Debt: Essays and Interviews (Zero Books, 2020). With A. Kleinherenbrink; The Polemics of Ressentiment. Variations on Nietzsche (Bloomsbury, 2018); Speculative Art Histories. Analysis at the Limits (Edinburgh University Press, 2017). pdf 

Interdisciplinary theory with V2_ Publishers: Drowning Capitalism (2025). Technological Accidents – Accidental Technologies (2023). pdf; To Mind is to Care (2019). pdf The War of Appearances: Transparancy, Radiancy, Opacity (2016). pdf; Giving and Taking. Antidotes to a Culture of Greed (2014). pdf

On Deleuze: Art History after Deleuze and Guattari (Leuven University Press, 2017). With S. Zepke. pdf and pdf Deleuze and the Passions (Punctum Books, 2016). With C. Meiborg. pdf Deleuze and The Fold. A Critical Reader (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). With N. McDonnell.

In Dutch: Leven in het antropoceen. Een handleiding (Boom, 2019). With M. Schuilenburg. pdf De nieuwe Franse filosofie. Denkers en thema's voor de 21e eeuw (Boom, 2011). With B. Ieven, A. van Rooden & M. Schuilenburg. pdf en pdf Deleuze compendium (Boom, 2009, 1st, 2nd, 3rd editions). With E. Romein & M. Schuilenburg. pdf en pdf

Guest editorials: ‘Res(s)ent(i)ment: Concept, Signifier, and Reclaimability’, Cultural Politics 21.1, 2025 (with J. Schaflechner); ‘Gebruik en Misbruik van Agamben’, De Uil van Minerva, December 2024 (with S. Meeuwsen); ‘Gewoonte: fenomenologische en ontologische benaderingen’, Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrijft voor de Wijsbegeerte 114.3, 2022 (with M. Wehrle); ‘Analytische en continentale filosofie’, De Uil van Minerva, 33.3, 2020; ‘Bruno Latour’, Wijsgerig Perspectief, 52.4, 2012 (with M. Schuilenburg); ‘Deleuze and visual art’, Deleuze Studies, 5.1, 2011; ‘Foucault en Biopolitiek’, Krisis, 2009.3 (with M. Schuilburg); ‘Peter Sloterdijk’, Cultural Politics, 3.3, 2007.

Courses taught

Graduate courses: What is an Apparatus? Institutions, Technologies, and Anarchism; Advanced Critical Theory: Readings in Marxism; The Principle and Function of Reason; Mannerism and Modernity; Political Affect; Leibniz Today (Neo-Monadologies); The Expressionist Aesthetics of Deleuze and Guattari; Alfred North Whitehead's 'Process and Reality'; Art Theory and Art Criticism; Metaphysics in Spinoza and Leibniz.

Undergraduate courses: Continental Metaphysics; The Uses of Fascism; Key Concepts for Ecological Encounters; Bergson and Continental Empiricism; Ontology and Metaphysics; Dialectics and Difference; Aesthetics; Plasticity of the Human; Philosophy and Rhetorics; Philosophy and Film; Philosophy of History; Ecophilosophy; Science, Culture and Technology; Thesis Writing; Philosophical Anthropology; Culture, Identity, and Globalization; Style and Modernity; Philosophy of Language; Disenchantment and Ideology; Philosophical Reading.

Current research

I’m working on a series of papers in which I develop a pedagogical practice and eco-philosophical reinterpretation of the principle of sufficient reason (PSR), geared towards achieving coherence between habits and habitats. According to Kant, the ‘idea of reason’ has passed through three stages: dogmatism, skepticism, and critique. Starting from the identification of a fault line in the late 19^th century responses to German Idealism, I elaborate a fourth stage, provisionally called care. This includes a contribution to modal ontology that shifts the emphasis from separate logical modalities to the interfusion of modes of existence.

One of my ongoing interests is in anarchism and autonomous Marxism, with a focus on questions of constituent and destituent power, the soul, and technology. I investigate the mediatic, ritual, and semiotic fields of belonging in which the constant (re)composition of collective bodies and souls occurs. This work on our affective incorporations, conspirative bubbles, and attention grabs includes revisiting the Kantian notion of the schematism and its reception in modern philosophy, as well as modes of value critique beyond the dualism of use value and exchange value.

At present I supervise projects on Designing the Climate: Towards Planetary Atmotechnics’’ (PhD), ‘Ontology of the Event: Whitehead, Heidegger, Deleuze’ (PhD), ‘A New Theory of Reason: The Enlightened Society beyond Freedom’ (PhD), ‘Aesthetic Transformations in Decolonial Media Practices’ (PhD), 'The Principle of Sufficient Reason: From Critique to Care' (PhD), 'The Role of Philosophy of Technology in the Anthropocene' (PhD).