Maria Balaska

Maria Balaska is a philosopher working in ethics, æsthetics, and language.

Fake NatureIn progressFake nature is showing up everywhere at the same time that the urgency about protecting real nature grows. Cities are covered in synthetic turf, fake plants fill our homes and offices, and we keep inventing new ways to simulate nature—from virtual reality hikes to ski resorts in the middle of deserts. What do we lose when we replace real nature with manmade copies?

Anxiety & Wonder: on Being HumanBloomsbury ¬ 2024At times, we find ourselves unexpectedly immersed in a mood that lacks any clear object or identifiable cause. These uncanny moments tend to be dismissed as inconsequential, left without explanation. I look into two such cases: wonder and anxiety — what it means to prepare for them, what life may look like after experiencing them, and what insights we can take from those experiences.

Cora Diamond on EthicsPalgrave Macmillan ¬ 2021An edited collection examining Diamond’s work on conceptual loss, moral theory, the category of the human, the moral consideration of animals, and the meaning of narcissism. Including comparisons to the work of other contemporary moral philosophers such as Martha Nussbaum, Jeff McMahan, Rai Gaita, Eva Kittay, Christine Korsgaard, and Edward Harcourt.

Wittgenstein and Lacan at the Limit: meaning and astonishmentPalgrave Macmillan ¬ 2019A discussion of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Jacques Lacan around their treatments of ‘astonishment’ and the dissatisfaction with meaning that such experiences generate when we attempt to articulate them. Instead of disappointment with language, these two thinkers can help us find in this revelation of meaning’s groundlessness an opportunity to acknowledge our own involvement in meaning, to creatively participate in it and thereby to enrich our forms of life with language.