Postdoctoral Scholar in Religion

Matthew Peterson studies how modern European philosophy inherits and transforms religious concepts and practices. His research and teaching focus on the history of metaphysics, secularism, and nihilism, with particular attention to the relationships between religion and science, technology, and media. He received his Ph.D. in the Philosophy of Religions from the University of Chicago Divinity School.

His current book project analyzes attempts to rewrite the philosophy of history in Europe during the social, political, and intellectual upheavals of the interwar period. Informed by philosophical, theological, and psychoanalytic sources, it argues that the crisis of those years was interpreted as the expression of latent historical forces that could only be articulated through the language of myth. In so doing, it aims to account for the affinities between the political milieu of the 1930s and today.

His articles and reviews have been published in Continental Philosophy Review and the Journal of Religion. He is also the translator, from the French, of Jean Vioulac’s Apocalypse of Truth, published by the University of Chicago Press. His work has been supported by the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion (MMC), the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD).