KEE, Hayden

Assistant Professor

B.A. (Mount Allison University); M.Phil. (K.U. Leuven); Ph.D. (Fordham University)
Rm 430
39437148
hkee@cuhk.edu.hk
https://haydenkee.com/

Brief Biography

Hayden Kee received his B.A. in Philosophy at Mount Allison University (Canada), his M.Phil. in Philosophy at K.U. Leuven (Belgium), and his Ph.D. in Philosophy at Fordham University (USA). Kee joined the Department of Philosophy at the Chinese University in 2021.

Kee’s research focuses on questions of mind, language, and cognitive science, all broadly construed. He is interested in how language and other higher cognitive abilities relate to more basic, embodied abilities and processes, such as emotion, perception, action, and preverbal communication. His approach to these questions is based in the European phenomenological tradition, in particular the work of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. He also draws from analytic philosophy; 4E cognitive sciences; and empirical research in psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience. His work increasingly engages the Indian philosophical tradition, especially the yoga school.

Kee has been awarded various research fellowships and grants from numerous international funding bodies including the Canadian Research Council, the German Academic Exchange Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation, and the University Grants Committee of Hong Kong.

Research Interests

  1. Continental Philosophy
  2. Phenomenology
  3. Environmental Philosophy
  4. Cognitive Sciences

Selected Publications

The publications listed below are available at Kee’s academia.edu page. If you have difficulty accessing any of these publications, contact Kee directly.

  1. Forthcoming. “Roots of Sentience: An Alternative Phenomenological Approach to Empathy with Plants.” Environmental Philosophy. 
  2. 2024. “‘Humanity Is Another Corporeity’: The Evolution of Human Bodily Appearance and Sociality.” Synthese. Available online.
  3. 2024. “Between Social Cognition and Material Engagement: The Cooperative Body Hypothesis.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. Available online.
  4. 2023. “Evolution and Esthesiology: Seeing the Eye through Merleau-Ponty’s Nature and Logos Lectures.” Humana.Mente. Available online.
  5. 2022. “In Search of Lost Speech: From Language to Nature in Merleau-Ponty’s Collège de France Courses.” Humana.Mente. Available online.
  6. 2021. “Fashioning the Word-Tool: The Instrumental Character of the Word in Yogic Mantra Meditation and Phenomenology.” Philosophy East and West 71(2): 348-368. Available online.
  7. 2021. “Sense-Making from the Top Down: Phenomenology and Naturalism in Autopoietic and Radical Enactivism.” Synthese 198: 2323-2343. Available online.
  8. 2020. “The Surplus of Signification: Merleau-Ponty and Enactivism on the Continuity of Life, Mind, and Culture.” Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy 28(1): 27-52. Available online.
  9. 2020. “Horizons of the Word: Words and Tools in Perception and Action.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 19: 905-932. Available online.
  10. 2020. “Pointing the Way to Social Cognition: A Phenomenological Approach to Embodiment, Imitation, Pointing, and Social Cognition in the First Year.” Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 40(3): 135-154. Available online.
  11. 2020. “Phenomenological Reduction in Merleau-Ponty’s The Structure of Behavior: An Alternative Approach to the Naturalization of Phenomenology.” European Journal of Philosophy 28(1): 15-32. Available online.  (Named EJP’s 2019 Prize Essay in Transcendental Philosophy)
  12. 2018. “Phenomenology and Ontology of Expression and Language: Merleau-Ponty on Speaking and Spoken Speech.” Human Studies 41(3): 415-435. Available online.