Dieter Thomä has been professor of philosophy at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland since 2000 and is currently the Max Kade Visiting Professor in the Department of German at the University of California at Davis. He has received fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt foundation, the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, and the Institute for Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg), Berlin, among others.

The title of his presentation for the Department of Political Science will be: "The strong and sturdy boy: Discovering a political figure in Hobbes, Rousseau, Tocqueville - and Today."

His current book project is on politics and the "generation game." Thomä has published extensively on Heidegger (Die Zeit des Selbst und die Zeit danach, Suhrkamp, 1990 and Heidegger Handbuch [ed.], 2003), on happiness (Vom Glück in der Moderne, Suhrkamp, 2003), on aesthetical and political aspects of the "Gesamtkunstwerk" (Totalität und Mitleid, Suhrkamp, 2006) and on various topics in the field of social and political philosophy.

(PS 595)