Douglas Giles
Douglas Giles is a philosopher by trade and temperament. He understands that philosophy is an active search for concepts on which we can build a better life. As a university philosophy professor for more than 21 years, he has introduced thousands of students in multiple countries to the value of philosophy in their lives.
Dr. Giles holds a Ph.D. in social and political philosophy from the University of Essex, UK, an M.A. in continental philosophy, and an M.A. in religious studies. Douglas has taught philosophy at Elmhurst since 2007, except for a break to study and teach in England. He is devoted to introducing students to philosophical ideas and thinkers they have not been given the opportunity to experience.
In his academic research in social and political philosophy, Douglas uses a phenomenological approach to better understand social injustices and people’s responses to them. He applies recognition theory as the key to understanding personhood, identity, injustice, social conflict, and social justice. His most recent book is his Introduction to Philosophy textbook, How We Are and How We Got Here: A Practical History of Western Philosophy (2022). His previous publications include What Left and Right Mean: Clarifying the Political Spectrum (2022), Individuals in the Social Lifeworld: A Social Philosophy of Heidegger’s Dasein (2021), The Quest for Understanding (2021), Rethinking Misrecognition and Struggles for Recognition: Critical Theory Beyond Honneth (2020), “Uncovering Neglected Emerging Lived Religious Pluralisms” (in Emergent Religious Pluralisms [Palgrave Studies in Lived Religion and Societal Challenges], 2019), “A Multidimensional View of Misrecognition” (in Ethics, Politics, & Society – A Journal in Moral and Political Philosophy, 2018), “Extending Honneth’s Shift in Focus for Critical Theory” (in Hybris, 2016), and “Locke and the Dao De Jing” (in Morality and Spirituality in the Contemporary World, 2012).