Positions harvard University

Committee on Degrees in Social Studies, Harvard University

William James Hall, 33 Kirkland Street, 3^rd floor, Cambridge, MA 02138

chacon@fas.harvard.edu, +1 (781) 690-4636

Lecturer on Social Studies, Committee on Degrees in Social Studies Fall 2010 -

Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science Fall 2009 – Spring 2010

Guest Lecturer, Institute of Political Science Summer 2007

Teaching Fellow Fall 2004/2005

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Political Science 2010

Dissertation: German Sokrates: Heidegger, Arendt, Strauss

Committee: James E. Miller (Chair), Richard J. Bernstein,

Andreas Kalyvas, David Plotke
MA in Political Science 2002

Fields: Political Theory, Comparative Politics

BA in International Relations 2000

Study abroad program, Political Science Department Fall 1997

“Totalitarismo,” in Carlos Pereda (ed.), Diccionario de Filosofía Política (Mexico City:

Siglo XXI), forthcoming

“On a Forgotten Kind of Grounding: Strauss, Jacobi, and the Phenomenological Critique of Modern Rationalism,” The Review of Politics, 76 (2014), 589-618

“Hannah Arendt in Weimar: Beyond the Theological-Political Predicament?,” in L.V. Kaplan and R.J. Koshar (eds.), The Weimar Moment: Liberalism, Political Theology, and Law (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012), 73-109

“Strauss and Husserl,” Idealistic Studies, Vol. 44, Nos. 2-3 (2014), 281-296

Review of Grant N. Havers, Leo Strauss and Anglo-American Democracy: A Conservative Critique and Laurence Lampert, The Enduring Importance of Leo Strauss, Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 13/No. 1, March 2015, 190-192

“Por Qué Filosofía Política? El Pensamiento Neo-Socrático de Hannah Arendt y

Leo Strauss,” Al Margen, No. 21, special issue dedicated to Hannah Arendt, Bogotá, Colombia, April, 2007, 234-250

WORK IN PROGRESS

Book manuscript

The Young Strauss: Political Philosophy in the Wake of Heidegger, 1921-1936
This book provides the first in-depth account of the genesis of Strauss’s political philosophy during the Weimar era. Drawing on recently published sources—notably, Heidegger’s lectures on Aristotle which Strauss attended—I argue that Strauss’s return to classical political philosophy was paradoxically made possible by Heidegger’s radical critique of that tradition. Heidegger’s revolutionary contribution to social and political thought was the recovery of a level of questioning prior to traditional oppositions between mind and world, nature and morality, theory and practice, physics and metaphysics. From that “classical” perspective, attributed to “Socrates” by his early students, Heidegger and Strauss provide competing accounts of the sources of normativity; the grounds of science; and the relation between reason and its (theological) Other.

ACADEMIC DISTINCTIONS AND AWARDS

National Researcher, Level I, CONACyT, Mexico, 2015-2018 (distinction awarded to

Mexican scholars who have made significant contributions to their fields, as well as to the formation of students. National Researchers are selected through peer review)

and Learning and the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Education, Harvard University, Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014 (awarded every semester to Lecturers or Preceptors who achieve an overall rating of 4.5 or above on a 5-point scale student evaluation system)

Social Studies, Harvard University, 2012 (awarded annually by the Committee to one Lecturer; the nomination process involves students and faculty)

(awarded annually by the College to advisors of theses that won the Hoopes Prize for outstanding scholarly research)

Fellow, University of Virginia, 2011

annually to the top student in the MA graduating class)

An introduction to the classic texts of social theory of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, focusing on the rise of democratic, capitalist societies, and the concomitant development of modern moral, political, and economic ideas. Authors examined include Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Smith, Tocqueville, Mill, and Marx. (Co-taught with other members of the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies.)

Continues Social Studies 10a through the twentieth century. Authors include Nietzsche, Weber, Durkheim, Hayek, Polanyi, Freud, Beauvoir, Fanon, Arendt, Foucault, and Habermas. (Co-taught with other members of the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies.)

Fall 2011-2014)

Fall/Spring 2012-14)

2009)
Liberalism and its Critics (Boston College, Spring 2010)

College, New York, Fall 2004)

“Soberanía y Derechos Humanos: Conflicto o Sinergia,” ITAM, Mexico City, Departamento de Estudios Internacionales, April 13, 2015

Leo Strauss,” Seminario de Investigación Política, ITAM, Mexico City, March 26, 2007

Board of Academic Advisors, Harvard College, 2010 -

MIT Press

Co-organizer of the international conference New Perspectives on Leo Strauss from America and Europe, The New School for Social Research, New York, November 17-18, 2005

Spanish (native)

English (fluent)

German (fluent)