Michael Fagenblat

I am Senior Lecturer at the Open University of Israel where I am in charge of establishing a new core curriculum in Humanities education specifically designed for students in the Social, Natural and Exact Sciences. These students' degree structure only allows for 1-2 courses in the Humanities and so the program I am establishing, called "Inspired Humanities," will provide the basic Humanities education for several thousand Israeli students. It consists of several new MOOC-like distance education courses in the Humanities, including one that I am developing called "Knowledge, Understanding, and Interpretation in the Humanities".

My research focuses on phenomenology and hermeneutics, with a general interest in the metaphysics of meaning and the philosophy of personal identity, and a special interest in how such issues are articulated in the thought of Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas. I love Aussie Rules Football, cooking, the Jewish sabbath, the Agent Intellect, wild flowers, asylum seekers, the poetry of Wallace Stevens, mystical theologies, and a few religious heresies.