Richard Amesbury

Richard Amesbury is a philosopher and scholar of religion with three main (occasionally overlapping) areas of interest: (a) religion and contemporary political thought; (b) Wittgenstein; and (c) the politics of the secular. 

Prior to joining ASU he held the chair in Theological Ethics at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and chaired the Philosophy and Religion Department at Clemson University, where he was Professor of Philosophy and of Religious Studies.

Professor Amesbury’s current research examines the ensemble of dispositions, affects, and intuitions that comprise the secular – i.e., the epistemic regime within which religion emerges as an object of interest, anxiety, regulation, and academic study. More broadly, he is interested in methodology in the humanities and in the role our moral reactions play in providing access to an intelligible, objective world.