Nicholas Buck, PhD
I am a scholar of religion, ethics, and politics currently serving on faculty in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at American University. My training and research lie at the intersections of religious studies, moral and political philosophy, and the philosophy of religion. Along with broad interests in these disciplines, I also have a background in the Christian tradition, which much of my work engages.
My writing falls into three research trajectories. The first pertains to religion and politics, broadly construed, and especially to themes of justice and democracy. I am at work on a book-length project that theorizes democracy in terms of political belonging, which engages select modern and contemporary thinkers and draws out their use of religious ideas and institutions in offering a distinct (and, necessarily, perpetually unfinished) agenda for the democratic project. The second considers the significance of perception and attention for the moral life along with the forces, ideas, and practices (especially religious) that shape them. My work in this area primarily engages thinkers and patterns of thought within and across the Christian tradition. The third takes up the ethics and politics of nonviolence, primarily in conversation with the thought of Martin Luther King Jr.
More information about my academic background can be found in my curriculum vitae, and a record of most of my published writing can be found here.