Catharine Diehl

Vita

Catharine Diehl studied philosophy and comparative literature at Brown University (B.A. 2001), the J.W. Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main (2005-2006), and Princeton University. Her dissertation, “Degrees of Reality: Theories of Intensity from Leibniz to Kant,” reassesses the development of aesthetics in the eighteenth century and argues that eighteenth-century aesthetics wrestles with problems of intensity that are first developed by Leibniz. Her research interests include German philosophy and literature from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century, the history of linguistics, and contemporary continental philosophy.

ICI-Project

"Differentials of Consciousness": Sensory Tensions from Leibniz to Ernst Bloch
This project explores fundamental tensions between aesthetics, metaphysics, and psychology through an investigation of theories of intensity from the late seventeenth through the early twentieth centuries. The intensity of a quality or sensation – for instance, brightness, warmth, or pain – is defined as its force or degree, the amount of the quality present in a single instant. The concept of intensity describes the tension within the qualitative, the inner difference underlying what appears to be simple and homogenous. Intensity often denotes an ineffable aspect of quality, a je ne sais quoi of experience. On the other hand, psychologists, physicists, and philosophers have defined it as the quantity of quality and attempted to construct a “measure” of sensation. In both instances, however, intensity constitutes a “differential” underlying an only apparently simple sensation or quality. I examine different paradigms of intensity in Leibniz, Kant, G. T. Fechner, Hermann Cohen and Ernst Bloch to trace a genealogy of the concept of a “differential” within sensation itself.

RECENT ARTICLES AND CONFERENCE PAPERS

• “The Empty Space in Structure: Theories of the Zero from Gauthiot to Deleuze,” diacritics 38.3 (2009), 93-119

• “Out of Time: Kant’s Practical Eschatology,” German Studies Association, St. Paul (October 2-5, 2008)

• “Leibniz on the Limitations of Receptivity,” Cornell University, The Time of Materiality, Theory Reading Group Annual Conference (April 4, 2007)

• “The Continuity of Cognition in Leibniz and Baumgarten,” MLA, Philadelphia (December 30, 2006)

• “The Infinitesimal of Sensation: Leibniz’ petites perceptions and Lessing’s Aesthetic Calculus,” American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, Montreal (March 30, 2006)

TRANSLATIONS

• “95 Theses on Philology" by Werner Hamacher, forthcoming in diacritics; excerpted version forthcoming in PMLA

• “Uncalled: A Commentary on Kafka's 'Test'” by Werner Hamacher, Reading Ronell, ed. Diane Davis (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2009)

• “The Image of Happiness We Harbor: The Messianic Power of Weakness in Cohen, Benjamin and Paul,” by Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky, New German Critique 35:3 (105)

• “The Pain of the Concept, Christian” by Werner Hamacher, presented at the University of Tel Aviv (May 26, 2007)

• “Cutting off Mediation: Agamben as Master Thinker,” by Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky, presented at the Irvine Critical Theory Institute (March 2, 2005)