Maria Balaska
"Because philosophy starts with questions it carries with it a sense of amazement at the world, at language, at our own selves and at others."
Maria Balaska is a philosopher whose work brings together continental philosophy, ethics, psychoanalysis, and political thought. She is a non-residential research fellow in Philosophy at Åbo Akademi University, where her research explores subjectivity, language, critique, and the limits of experience.
Her more recent work turns to the ethical and existential stakes of experience itself. In Anxiety & Wonder: On Being Human, she explores how moods without clear objects can disclose the groundlessness and creativity of human sense-making. Maria has written for the Los Angeles Review of Books, Monocle, Aeon, and TIME Magazine.
"[Balaska] illuminates not only the distinctive nature of philosophy, but its ineliminable role in the perennial human task of making sense of ourselves and our place in the universe.” — Stephen Mulhall