Neil Robertson

Neil G Robertson is an associate professor in the Foundation Year, Early Modern Studies, and Contemporary Studies programmes. Dr Robertson graduated from the University of King’s College in 1985 with a BA in political science. He went on to take an MA in Classics at Dalhousie University, and in 1995 completed his PhD at Cambridge University in social and political science. He has held the position of director of the Foundation Year Programme and is past director of the Early Modern Studies Programme, of which he was the founding director. Dr Robertson was the King’s College dean of residence in 1989 to 1990 and was chair of faculty between 2001 and 2012.

Teaching and research interests

• contemporary political thought
• early modern political thought
• the shaping of modernity in early modern Europe.

Current research projects

Dr Robertson's research centres on critiques of modernity. He is currently co-editing, with Susan Dodd, Unity of Opposites? Hegel and Canadian Political Thought (University of Toronto Press)  He is writing on the theme of "constitutional liberty", specifically through the thought of Charles Inglis, the founder of King's. 

Selected publications

• "The Second Cave: Leo Strauss and the Possibility of Education in the Contemporary World in J G York and M A Peters eds. Leo Strauss: Education and Political Thought (Madison, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011) 34-51.
• "The Emergence of the Modern Self (1500-1800)" in S Harris Christian Psychology (Charlottetown, St Peter's 2010) 123-50.
• Co-edited with Gordon McOuat and Tom Vinci Descartes and the Modern (Newcastle, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007)
• "The Doctrine of Creation and the Enlightenment" in M Treschow et al eds. Divine Creation in Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Thought (Leiden, Brill, 2007) 425-39.
• "Platonism in High Places: Leo Strauss, George Bush and the Response to 9/11" in M Meckler Classical Antiquity and the Politics of America (Waco: Baylor UP, 2006) 153-74.
• “Milbank and Modern Secularity” in W.J. Hankey and Douglas Hedley eds. Deconstructing the Radical Orthodoxy (Aldershot, Ashgate Press, 2005) 81-97.
• “George Grant: Intimations of Deprival, Intimations of Beauty” Modern Age (Winter/Spring 2004, Vol. 46, nos. 1-2) 74-83.
• Co-edited with David Peddle, Philosophy and Freedom: The Legacy of James Doull (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2003).
• Edited with David Peddle, ”Lamentation and Speculation: George Grant, James Doull and the Possiblity of Canada” Animus 7 (2002) 1-29
• “Leo Strauss’s Platonism” Animus 4 ( 2000).
• “The Closing of the Early Modern Mind: Leo Strauss and Early Modern Political Thought” Animus 3 (1998) 1-16.

Classes taught

• CTMP3103.03 Critiques of modernity
• CTMP4410.03 European nihilism
• EMSP2000.06X/Y Structures of the modern self
• EMSP4500.06X/Y Honours seminar: The development of aesthetic theory in the early modern period