Lawlor received his doctorate from SUNY Stony Brook in 1988 and taught at the University of Memphis from 1989–2008, where he held the position of Faudree-Hardin University Professor of Philosophy from 2004 to 2008 before joining the faculty at Penn State, as Sparks Professor of Philosophy. He is known for his writings on phenomenology and on the figures Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Henri Bergson, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, and Jean Hippolyte. Lawlor's most recent work concerns transcendental violence and possible responses to it. His recent From Violence to Speaking Out takes up the question of responses to violence. Although From Violence to Speaking Out contains precise expositions of important ideas in Derrida, Deleuze, and Foucault, it is an original work of philosophy, extending ideas found in his 2007 This is not Sufficient. Somewhat disguised by the expositions, From Violence to Speaking Out is primarily a work in ethics.
Selected bibliography
Books authored
From Violence to Speaking out.
Early Twentieth-Century Continental Philosophy.
This is not Sufficient: An Essay on Animality and Human Nature in Derrida.
The Implications of Immanence: Towards a New Concept of Life.
The Challenge of Bergsonism: Phenomenology, Ontology, Ethics.
Thinking through French Philosophy: The Being of the Question.
Derrida and Husserl: The Basic Problem of Phenomenology.
Imagination and Chance: The Difference between the Thought of Ricoeur and Derrida.
Books edited
Co-editor of "The Blackwell Companion to Derrida".
Co-editor of Derrida: Critical Assessments in three volumes.
Co-editor of Chiasms: Merleau-Ponty’s Notion of the Flesh.
Editor and primary translator of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology.
Works translated
Jacques Derrida’s La voix et le phénomène as Voice and Phenomenon.
Co-translator of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s course notes, 1955-56: L’institution, La passivité, as Institution and Passivity.
Co-translator of Renaud Barbaras’s The Being of the Phenomenon: Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology.
Co-translator of Jean Hyppolite's "Logic and Existence".
Selected articles
“Phenomenology and Metaphysics, and Chaos: On the Fragility of the Event in Deleuze,” in The Cambridge Companion to Deleuze, eds. Daniel Smith and Henry Somers-Hall, pp. 103–125.
"Neither Violent nor Tranquil,” for special issue of the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology on Foucault, eds. Keith Crome and Patrick O’Connor, 43.1 : 6-21.
“Deconstruction”, for the Routledge Companion to Phenomenology, eds. Sebastian Luft and Soren Overgaard : pp. 508–517.
“A Note on the Relation between Étienne Souriau’s L’instauration philosophique and Deleuze and Guattari’s What is Philosophy?,” in Deleuze Studies 5.3 : 400-406.
“Further Questions: The Way out of the Present Philosophical Situation,” in the Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, 19.1 : 91-104.
“The Postmodern Self: An Essay on Anachronism and Powerlessness,” for The Oxford Handbook to the Self, Ed. Shaun Gallagher : pp. 696–714.
“Philosophy and Reality: Reflection on Cora Diamond’s Works,” in Philosophical Investigations, 34.4 : 353-366.
“Intuition and Duration: An Introduction to Bergson’s Introduction to Metaphysics,” in Phenomenology and Bergsonism, Ed. Michael Kelly : pp. 25–41.
“Auto-affection and Becoming : Who are We?” in Environmental Philosophy, 6.1 : 1-20.
“Following the Rats: An Essay on the Concept of Becoming-Animal in Deleuze and Guattari,” in Sub-Stance, “The Political Animal,” Issue 117, Volume 37, Number 3, 2008: 169-187.
“Waiting and Lateness: The Context, Implications, and Basic Argumentation of Derrida’s ‘Awaiting the Arrival’ in Aporias,” in Research in Phenomenology, 38.3 : 329-403.
“Animals have no Hand: An Essay on Animality in Derrida,” The New Centennial Review, 7.2 : 43-70.
“Life: an Essay on the Overcoming of Metaphysics,” in Edinburgh University Press Companion to Twentieth Century Philosophies, Ed., Constantine Boundas : 517-530.
“Phenomenology: the Way out of Subjectivism,” in Edinburgh University Press Companion to Twentieth Century Philosophies, Ed., Constantine Boundas : 389-401.
“'For the Creation Waits with Eager Longing for the Revelation': From the Deconstruction of Metaphysics to the Deconstruction of Christianity in Derrida,” Epoche, 10.2 : 359-377.
