Thomas Khurana is Professor of Philosophical Anthropology and Philosophy of Mind at the University of Potsdam and Director of the Potsdam Center for Post-Kantian Philosophy.
His research spans social and political philosophy, philosophy of mind, philosophical anthropology, and aesthetics, with a particular focus on German Idealism, Critical Theory, and twentieth-century continental philosophy.
He has held several distinguished fellowships and visiting appointments, including a Heisenberg Fellowship and a Max Kade Visiting Professorship at Yale University, and a Humboldt Fellowship at the University of Chicago.
He has authored and edited numerous books and volumes, alongside a broad range of journal articles and special issues. Recent publications include The Life of Freedom in Kant and Hegel (Cambridge University Press, 2026) and Recognition: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives, co-edited with Matthew Congdon (Routledge, 2025).
Among his current projects are a monograph on the Critique of Political Ecology, a study on Hegel in the Anthropocene, and a book on Being Genus: From Kant to Marx.

In his talk in the PRISM Talk Series – Philosophical Reflections and Inquiries on Society and Mind, Khurana extends lines of thought from his recently published book The Life of Freedom in Kant and Hegel to questions of human freedom in relation to nature and discusses Hegel as a thinker of the ‘Anthropocene’ in a double sense. On the one hand, Hegel articulates and defends the modern self-understanding that is tied to the problematic relation to nature that has brought about the ‘Anthropocene’. At the same time, Hegel develops an internal critique of the ‘anthropocenic’ mind, pointing us to a different way of conceiving of the relation of spirit and nature. For Hegel liberation is not about leaving nature behind or the simple domination nature, but about overcoming the dualism of spirit and nature. Rather than simply suppressing nature, liberation from nature requires the appropriation, transformation and utilization of nature itself. Yet it is precisely this regime of an intensive engagement with, of an expansive appropriation and economization of nature that has proven so devastating in the Anthropocene. Khurana argues that Hegel is interesting as a thinker of the Anthropocene not only because he brings out this self-conception with special clarity, but because he develops it dialectically to the point where we can see its inner contradictions and shortcomings. Thus, Hegel allows us to question the appropriation, transformation and utilization of nature that is part and parcel of the modern life-form.