Jacob McNulty is a historian of philosophy, specializing in modern European philosophy. His first book, Hegel’s Logic and Metaphysics, appeared in 2023 from Cambridge University Press; and his second, on Herbert Marcuse and the Frankfurt School, is under contract with Routledge. His research so far has encompassed two main projects. The first concerns efforts by the German idealists to resolve problems in Kant’s critical philosophy by re-thinking the relationship between logic and metaphysics. The second focuses on attempts by Frankfurt School critical theorists to interpret Marx’s historical materialism as a form of transcendental idealism. At Yale, he hopes to pursue a third project on the concept of mutual recognition in 19th-century philosophy.
His articles on Rousseau, Fichte, and others have appeared (or will appear) in the European Journal of Philosophy, the Journal for the History of Philosophy, the British Journal for the History of Philosophy, and in edited volumes. He also has an interest in musical aesthetics and has published a short response piece on philosophical issues raised by atonal music. Before coming to Yale, Jake was a Bersoff post-doctoral fellow at NYU and a Lecturer at University College London. He has taught a range of philosophy courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Jake received his PhD from Columbia in 2019 where he was advised by Fred Neuhouser and Axel Honneth. Before coming to Columbia, he received an A.B. in Social Studies from Harvard College, and an M.Phil in Intellectual History from Cambridge. Outside of philosophy, he plays jazz guitar.