Douglas L. Berger is, since 2017, Professor of Global and Comparative Philosophy and the Director of the Centre for Intercultural Philosophy at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

More information about Douglas Berger

Background

Professor Berger also served one term as the Academic Director (Chair) of the Institute (2021-24). Before taking on this post, he served as Professor of Indian and Chinese Philosophy at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale USA (2006-2017) and was Chair of that Department as well (2015-17), Visiting Associate Professor at Dalhousie University and Kings College in Halifax, Canada (2012, 2014-15), Associate Professor at Oakton Community College in Des Plaines, IL (2002-2006) and Assistant Professor at Temple University’s branch campus in Tokyo and main campus in Philadelphia (2000-2002). He was, furthermore, as a Philosophy Fellow in the Chinese Philosophy MA program at at Fudan University in Shanghai, China in the summer of 2017 and a Post-Doc researcher at Eberhard-Karls Universität in Tübingen, Germany (1999-2000).

Professor Berger holds a Ph.D. with Distinction from the Religious Studies Department at Temple University in Philadelphia (2000), an M.A. magna cum laude from the same department (1996) and a B.A cum laude with Senior Honors from the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of North Dakota (1993). He has also received an NEH Certificate from the East-West Center at the University of Hawai’i for participation in the workshop “Religion and Politics in India” (2005) and an East-West Center Teaching Certificate for “Integrating Chinese Studies into the Undergraduate Curriculum” at the University of Hawai’i (2004). 

Professor Berger’s research expertise is focused primarily in four areas, namely classical debates in Indian epistemology and metaphysics (Nyāya and Buddhism), early and medieval Chinese philosophical traditions (Confucianism, Mohism, Daoism, Buddhism), Intercultural Philosophical Hermeneutics and 19th-20th Century Continental Philosophy. He has written four monographs, including Indian and Intercultural Philosophy: Personhood, Consciousness and Causality (Bloomington Publications, 2021), Encounters of Mind: Luminosity and Personhood in Indian and Chinese Thought (SUNY Press, 2015) and “The Veil of Māyā: Schopenhauer’s System and Early Indian Thought (SUNY Bighamton, 2004). He has also edited and co-edited influential volumes in the field, both as Chief Editor of the University of Hawaii Press book series Dimensions of Asian Spirituality (2011-20) and as co-editor, with JeeLoo Liu, of the influential collection of essays Nothingness in Asian Philosophy (Routledge, 2014). Professor Berger has also published dozens of papers and chapters in major journals and essay collections and serves as an Editorial Board Member of the flagship journal of Asian and Intercultural Philosophy, University of Hawaii Press’ Philosophy East and West. 

Professor Berger has served as President (2014-2016) of the international Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy, which capped extended service on every position on its governing board from 2008-2017. And he has continuously worked to disseminate familiarity with Asian philosophical traditions around the globe. A series of his introductory lectures on Indian, Chinese and Buddhist philosophy offered at Universidad de Caldas in Manizales, Colombia, South America in 2015 was translated into Spanish and published by that institution’s press two years later. He is currently working on a fifth monograph, a textbook introduction that will offer a thematic treatment of the entire history of Chinese Philosophy for Routledge Press’ series The Basics.

Research

After many years working in the fields of Indian-Continental cross-cultural thought and longstanding debates between Brāhmiṇical-Buddhist debates in classical India, Professor Berger is concentrating in his current research on early Chinese thought and cross-cultural dialogue between Chinese and Indian traditions. 

Curriculum vitae

2000: Post-doctoral Research, Philosophy, Tübingen University, Germany
2000: Ph.D. with Distinction, Religious Studies, Temple University, Philadelphia
1996: M.A., magna cum laude, Religious Studies, Temple University, Philadelphia
1993: B.A., Philosophy and Religion, University of North Dakota 

PhD supervision

Professor Berger has supervised numerous Ph.D. projects at previous institutions and will be looking for opportunities to do so in Leiden's Comparative Philosophy program.